Public Transport Must Be Frequent
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
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Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
What topics should I cover next? Let me know in the comments!
Gendered planning of transit. We prioritize transit to office spaces during rush hour instead of helping people run errands or get to school and service jobs. Also making people feel safe on public transit. A lot of men are willing to wait at an unlit bus stop at night, women less so.
The viability of Exo rebuilding the Granby line as a new line for service.
One thing that you mentioned in this video that could be an interesting video topic is speed and time competitiveness of transit. I think it’s usually ok for transit to take a bit longer than driving; for example if Google Maps tells you that driving would take 20 minutes whereas hopping on a frequent metro service or bus service would take 30 minutes, that is still a good transit service. Whereas if a certain trip takes 30 minutes to drive and 90 minutes by transit, that’s probably not going to be a transit service that people who can access a car would use.
I think it would be interesting if you could cover the advantages and disadvantages of the hub-and-spoke model vs the point-to-point model. In Singapore, the hub-and-spoke model is adopted where high frequency feeder bus services connect neighbouring housing estates to a bus interchange or an MRT (train) station. This has resulted in the rationalisation of bus services where duplicated routes with the MRT system are amended or withdrawn. The hub-and-spoke model also increases the strain on certain major interchanges.
I'm not sure if this is a topic you've covered already, or if there's even enough in this topic to make a video, but I'd love to hear your take on the "car-based infrastructure pays for itself" argument. Granted, I understand the perspective that many urbanists take that transit shouldn't have to be profitable to justify its existence, but this perspective is a wall that a loud majority(?) of people in the US (and presumably Canada too) seem to keep up to block out public transit and infrastructure investment. Also, it's not entirely true.
For instance, I was born and raised in Chicago so I spent a little time reading government budget documents to learn how Illinois funds its roads and highways vs its public transit. I found that while a majority of car-based infrastructure projects come from gas tax, registration fees, taxes levied on trucks, etc., there is still a surprising amount that is paid for with bonds that use sales and property taxes to pay them back. Since public transport and car-based infrastructure share the same government department and thus the same budget, the same could be said about public transit, but nobody is arguing that public transit pays for itself in the US currently. That's just one thing I learned from a little research using publicly-available government documentation.
I'm sure that plenty of other US states and areas in Canada also suffer this flawed argument and mentality. Would love to know if this is something you see as an issue worth addressing and if so, what kind of information should we be emphasizing to help people bring down their walls around public transit? Thanks for reading this far if you did btw.
5:22 I once heard someone say "A rich country isn't one where everyone has a car but where even the wealthy use public transport."
A famous quote!
So Switzerland is a rich country.
@Zaydan Naufal Teacher: Is singapore a rather poor country or a rather rich one?
Student: It's rather poor, I guess.
Teacher: Why do you guess it's poor?
Student: Well, if it were rich, it'd be called Singarich.
mayor of bogota
The point about transfers really hits this point home. It's one type of annoyance to have to plan your trip around a low frequency line, but having to transfer to a low frequency line is a nightmare. It's almost impossible to time the transfers even when systems try so you are transferring essentially at a random time. And since most transit trips involve at least one transfer, this problem is a reality for most riders. If the line has 30 min frequency, you're waiting on average 15 min, and maximum 30 min IN ADDITION to your regular travel time! If 30 min is maximum then you basically have to plan around 30 min, and I personally don't like to show up to work 30 min early every day.
Indeed, it becomes the measure of slack in your travel time, you could also be 30 minutes late!
I used to have this issue but that was when I was working in an industrial part of the city on the night shift. I didn't mind the last bus having a 30min frequency at 11pm. This is this line has a 30min frequency all day and is the only line going in the area.
Montreal is not a bad city for public transit but many area suffer from low/very low frequency which make it a pain for those living on the island and impossible for those elsewhere.
Maybe not the most realistic example in the rest of the world, but for the most part Switzerland has nailed this. Rural rail lines often run only every hour or 30 minutes, yet when they arrive at major stations, all the local and regional transport is coordinated with them - so you'll see a fleet of ships/buses/trams/narrow gauge trains at the station (which arrived a few minutes before the main line train arrived for their passengers to connect) which wait a few minutes after the main line train arrives for people to transfer across. The downside is that most of the country's local transport has to be planned at a national level so it may cut out a bit of innovation in less densely-populated areas. The biggest towns and cities end up with public transport that is frequent enough to mean schedule alignment isn't possible or even attempted.
I used to hate getting the train from my home town to London and back- no matter when I did it, I always had to wait about an hour for a change of trains. This was at a station just an 8 minute trip from my home town, thankfully now I have a car and can just drive and park at that railway station instead.
That maximum of 30 minutes assumes every scheduled bus is actually running and shows on time. It’s not unusual to wait over an hour for a bus transfer in Phoenix
I have a good example of the importance of frequency. I live about 200 miles from London, and a few years ago I was at a work meeting in West London (i.e. on the same side as Heathrow Airport). My colleague flew, while I took the train. But there were only there or four flights a day, whereas the InterCity train service ran every half hour. He had to wait at the airport for his flight home, whereas I got the train into central London and caught the first InterCity train home. I was sitting at home before his aircraft took off!
Indeed, even if the flight itself was faster if there was less service it wouldn't matter
I do hope we continue to push for more advanced railway networks here in the UK.
Prior to 9/11 (2001, when the World Trade Center collapsed due to a terrorist attack), there were many short flights between points from Boston to Washington, D.C., only for them to basically disappear thanks to the Northeast Regional and Acela (on top of people generally flying less often, largely because of the aforementioned incident). Good intercity rail service will trump short flights any day of the week.
@@sonicboy678 Also, consolidation of US air carriers reduced the number of hub airports. Before 9/11, when Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky was the second largest hub for Delta, they would fly a 70-mile flight between Dayton International Airport and Cincinnati
I love the fact I never have to wait for a Victoria line train in London. With trains every 100 seconds I’d happily skip one or two if they are too crowded.
It's lovely, and you can do this because you know the next one will be around shortly!
I agree! The first real transport I used was the Moscow Metro. It runs on ~90 second headways during peak and ~5 minutes off-peak. I never had to check the schedule or anything, I knew a train would be along soon. I always feel so weird going to places with longer headways. Checking the schedule ahead of time is such a foreign concept for me that I always end up waiting for a long time on platforms.
I used to commute on Shanghai Lines 1 and 2, and it was the same. Peak headway is 2 minutes or less. So convenient.
The frequency-ridership relation is very useful, I think to measure the successs of a transit system. When my city's metro opened, they ran every twenty minutes. Once demand picked up, they doubled frequency and I'm happy to say that passenger numbers were more than doubled. I am quite happy in saying, I can't always find a seat. I'm happy with a four car train every ten minutes instead of an eight car train every twenty minutes.
Absolutely, and that ridership more than doubled shows that demand is not fixed.
Are there plans to increase frequency further? Every 10 minutes is not very good for a metro.
What frequency would be currently possible (if there would be enough trains and drivers?)
@@nicolasblume1046 Victoria Line in London is I think every 100 seconds. In practice that means that you see the front of the next train at one end of the platform while the back of the previous one has just about left the other end of the platform.
@@RMTransit What do you think of PIX-IX street getting BRT service and thus 2 fully separated lanes in Montreal? I believe it's gonna be super good as it bring people from the north-north east to the green metro and soon the blue line too with the added benefit of bus not being stuck in traffic at all.
I used to take the regular bus line when I was way younger and during rush hour we had a bus schedule every 5min or so and with traffic you'd often find two bus one after the other, first one being full while the one behind was near empty since everyone was picked up by the first bus. Now add the express line into the mix and it was a mess.
I think there is a bit of a chicken/egg problem that makes buy in difficult for increasing transit services. Places will not invest in more frequency unless they have higher ridership, but we cannot get higher ridership without higher frequency
The freedom of biking when I choose is nice.And then sometimes walking beats bussing for speed when buses are uncommon enough.
One key thing for cycling is that the average time is more consistent. With a car other traffic makes a huge difference - 2am trips will be faster than 8am trips, but even worse, you never know just how bad traffic will be. Then you have to find parking, and that's another random time element. On a bicycle you just go "I ride at X speed, it'll take Y time" and that's it. Plus, of course, on a bicycle if you're in a hurry you can ride faster... in a car that option is discouraged.
It’s sad how often it’s faster to walk two miles in Phoenix than it is to take the same trip on the bus.
Frequency is very important for a transit system, but not everything. It is also important that the departure times are regularly and easy to remember. A frequency of two trains per hour doesn't automatically mean that the train comes every 30 minutes. It is also possible that the trains comes with a 20/40min-frequency which is not that customer-friendly.
I have a video titled that!
th-cam.com/video/3FPXZfySAZw/w-d-xo.html
On rhe contrary, What you say istrue only on low frequencies. Once you reach 5 minutes or less, departure times become irrelevant, and they are only slightly relevant at frequencies 5-10 mins. Thus is because even if you just missed the train, If you know next one is coming in 5 mins it is not a big deal. Nor you need to plan for specific drparture with this kind of frequency.
If you want an example of awful frequency: my high school was 4 km away from my house and walking there took about 50 minutes. However, for most of the day, walking there was quicker than waiting for the bus that went between Montreal and Laval because it passed once an hour
If you had a safe bicycle network at that time, using a bicycle would have saved you so much time.
Going to guess there was no safe bicycle network, otherwise you would have gone by bicycle instead of walking.
@@DarkDutch007 well firstly I rarely did that walk, there was a bus that was scheduled to pass 15 minutes after school ended, so I usually took it and only walked when I missed the bus. However you can technically get there by bike, but as you guessed, there are no dedicated biking lanes
Plus I was a bit lazy at the time, like in college I started biking to school, but only during the pandemic, and now in uni that's just not viable anymore, so back to public transit. Luckily, Université de Montréal has its own dedicated metro station
Looking through a recent climate change adaptation study by Metrolink (southern California, march 11 executive committee) I was struck by the increased need for shade and shelter. A video about what constitutes sufficient station amenities in extreme weather (too hot, too wet, too cold, etc.) might be interesting. When is it worth building a shelter? When should a shelter be upgraded with powered signage? At what point is a climate controlled space justified?
@Zaydan Naufal I mean, California could get scorching hot even before temperatures started rising quite, because of climate change. A shelter with shade is pretty cool, even outside of extreme heat, in a lot of places. At least that's my experience from using transit in Athens.
Having waited 45 mins twice to take 2 buses, maintaining good frequency, especially on weekends and off peak hours, is something I wish my local transit operator tried to do
as an American: any kind of transit that comes once every 10 minutes would be amazing. The best I have ever seen is once every 30.
This video confirms my suspicion on why Public Transportation is really successful in Seattle and really lacking in Los Angeles. While buses travel faster / cover more distance in LA, a ton of corridors only run every 20 minutes most of the day (at best). Seattle on the other hand has 10 minutes or better for most of the working hours of the day, not just rush hour (at rush hour it can be like every 2-3 minutes on the most heavily used routes -- pre pandemic of course). In my experience lots of people in Seattle use the bus that aren't transit dependent or transit enthusiasts - they're just picking the most convenient option.
I love the frequency on the Shanghai Metro. Almost every line has headways of 5 minutes or less, so you're almost never waiting for a train for longer than a couple of minutes. On the busiest lines (Line 1 and 2 in particular) headways are as low as 2 minutes at peak hours. Makes taking the subway anywhere in the system really convenient. And of course, being a huge city, new lines get immediate frequency (similar headways to existing lines) and big trains (most lines are 120m+ / 6 cars; some are 160m+ /8 cars in the most heavily used areas). Shanghai has also moved heavily toward automation, with the last three major lines to open (14, 15, and 18) all fully automated, so increasing frequency on these lines in particular will be simply a matter of adding more trains as the signalling is already fully capable of very short headways.
Indeed the new lines in Shanghai are quite fascinating, the main struggles it has are dwell times and a bit of network layout stuff!
@@RMTransit Dwell times have definitely been improved, as I think they've been upgrading the signalling on the oldest lines to support fully automated operation. Lines 1 and 2 in particular have noticeably much shorter dwell times than they did a few years ago. I'll definitely agree there are a few bad missed transfers, though - Lines 4/8 (north), Lines 4/11 and 4/13 (south), 10/15, and 12/14 being the worst of the missed interchanges.
China 🙄
Frequency is super important as a transit user. When I lived next to a subway station, I know the subway will come every 4-5min. And so, I never checked the plan, I just went out of my apartment to the station. Now I live near a bus station only, and now I have to plan ahead or wait.
I used to have a 15 minute bus service at my front door. When they cut it back to 30 minutes they crossed a psychological boundary and it became a lot less appealing. Now I have a bus every half hour one way (two different routes), then the same two buses together every hour the other way. Even less appealing...
In Orange County, California the transit runs hourly at the most. I frequently have to travel about four miles to a shopping center and it is faster to walk than take the bus. It’s just shows how infrequent transit is useless.
as someone who spent 17 years living in Singapore, my first source of frustration is either Buses arriving too early (far before the supposed arrival time) or insanely delayed to the point that 2 buses serving the exact same route is arriving almost one after another. Frequency is usually not the biggest beef i had with buses over there. sometimes the board said the next bus should be arriving in 5 minutes but it took longer than that.
in my opinion, tracking needs to be implemented properly for buses. for trains, this isn't much of an issue. knowing when your bus is arriving might make or break the experience, especially when weather can be unbearable sometimes. moreso if the country you live in is both hot and humid during the day.
This is one of the most important videos on what is already one of the best and most important channels on TH-cam.
so many times I've had to take a GO train back home and either missed it or my schedule didn't align with the train schedule and I had to wait at the station (without benches on the platform) for an entire hour
I live in a relatively small town, with about 50k population. We have full sized busses making trips (past my house at least) every hour. I rarely see more than a few people on board. It almost seems like it would be better to have a larger fleet of smaller busses. Though I guess it's more complicated than I thought.
The area I live in sounds pretty similar to yours except there is a fleet of smaller and faster buses serving us, called minibus. They were operated by a few small corporations and were less well-equipped (with malfunctioning stop bells, seat belts and no wheelchair access) but many locals preferred them over regular buses despite having to pay a higher fee per trip. The reason why is mainly due to how fast they were, a mostly similar route (so they are in direct competition with the bus companies) and the higher frequency of departures available. ( like you have several minibuses arriving within 10-15 minutes and the buses only arrive every 20-30 minutes)
Operating hours is probably second to frequency on importance. For a while I used to do a daily commute via a bus and a train - with the bus I left on being the first of the day from near my house, and only having a tiny window of trains to take home to ensure I made the last bus of the day home.
The saving grace was that at least most of the time the bus was synchronised with the train arrival - so usually even if there was a delay I'd still get home, but they don't run the buses up until the last train.
I could have driven to the station, but I was never going to be awake enough at 6:30am to drive, the extra nap time made the slight inconvenience of those buses worthwhile.
I think untalked about 2nd facture alike to frequency is reliability. If I have to take a bus instead of a tube or mainline not only do I have to allow time for the maximum possible wait(I'm talking 12 minuet frequency as appose to frequency messured in seconds so timetabling isn't the solution to this) but also allow time for trafic, far more oftern brocken down vehicles creating gaps in timetable etc. meaning a huge extra time allowence is needed if you need to get to something on time. And all of my more negative experiences with public transports aren't when a route is low quality or slow but when some sort of fault makes a journy longer than I expected(My record is a 2 train with usually enough capacity to be quite empty and 1 bus journey of about 5h becoming more like 10h on 6 crouwded trains and a diverted bus in traffic. Oh, and having to sleep on the chairs in a brightly lit ferry terminal for a 4AM ferry after a coach got stuck in traffic.) When choosing a college I am trying to make sure I have redundancy between train lines, operators and sections of government)
Sorry about my spelling.
I talk about in this video: th-cam.com/video/oiLdAgaYaYw/w-d-xo.html but at certain frequencies consistency definitely matters more
absolutely 100% agree, frequency is essential. There's a bus line that stops literally 100m away from my home but I've used it once in the last 3 years for my daily commute (2-4 trips a day), it's literally faster to walk for 20min (also probably healthier but that's not the main reason) than wait for a bus that comes around twice an hour, is almost always at least 10 minutes late (so you miss most connections) and is practically useless for when I'd like to use it. It only comes around from 6.30 to 9 and on the weekend it only goes from 9 to 8, so I can't even use it the few times it's pitch black and I would prefer an infrequent bus to the long uphill walk without a single street lamp
For new videos I would like to see more on "Pulsing" systems. You have discussed how reliability can be equivalent to frequency for lower cost, but systems that are well timed can allow a majority of transfers to be as convinent in the same way as frequency.
I'd also love to see something on ride shares used to solve last 10km problem. Cars don't have to compete, dropping a 100km car ride to a 10km is a great way to put them together, particularly on peripheral areas.
Pulses are great if you are not running frequent service. Once you are frequent enough it doesn't matter
Yes, pulse systems did get discussed on an episode of talking transit but I think it really would benefit from a dedicated video.
@@RMTransit the Netherlands used to be really good at this. However they now focus so much on frequency on the main lines that they think pulsing is not so relevant anymore. Which is true of course, on the main lines. The other lines suffer from it.
Frequency is an absolute must - this will never be repeated enough (...pun realized after writing...).
So many fancy expensive systems and always an obsession on speed, while what really gains ridership is frequency.
I’d like to see how you’d go about improving rural and very small city/ town transport. I think it’s often overlooked in the transit space, but keeping good links for people not living in metropolises is crucial and things aren’t looking great for a lot of these places at the moment. For example, my city, Hereford, UK (population only around 63,000) has seen some alarming cutbacks in bus service:
-First the rural village services were cut from hourly to 2 hourly with no Sunday service
-This was followed by most of the city buses, that ran at 15 minute intervals, being cancelled altogether, with inadequate replacements.
-The buses are horribly maintained and poor quality.
-And the area around the train station (which is actually decently served) has been redeveloped in a way that makes utilising buses very difficult for visitors.
How do we improve service like this, where local governments often simply do not have the money to expand?
The local government needs to have foresight. If local residents have access to good bus service that can give them easy access workolaces and schools and access to services like stores and what not, they might be able to ditch the car altogether.
This will free up a lot of their funds, as cars is one of the most expensive mode of transport. Instead buying a car, maintaining it and buy petrol, all that cash will be freed up to spend in the local economy, thus giving much more local tax revenue.
A couple of smaller Swedish municipalities have tried bringing different transport services together as much as possible (ordinary bus service, school bus service, transport for the elderly or disabled). They have, quite successfully brought much of that together as free(for locals) public transport. The benefit of this is a lower cost for a higher frequency as for example a bus that was previously a school bus, now is part of the public transport and can be used by everyone instead.
Some of them tried it for a while, some still offer this service.
But your local municipality really needs to have a smart plan on how to make anything happen😉
The most important thing is that service must good enough to lower the amount of cars in the community so that the residents free up funds.
They could, except the the things mentioned above, have carpool membership as part of the ticket price(for monthly tickets for example).
What I can think of:
1) Pick the right size of buses. In Hong Kong, there are 16-seat minibuses for some rural / less urban / less popular routes. Smaller vehicles are cheaper to run. They also maneuver better in countryside / hilly roads.
2) Make cutting service frequency / period as hard as or even harder than raising the bus fare. So the first choice when a bus route can't maintain itself financially will not be cutting service. A pricier bus service is better than no service / unusable service.
This kinda remminds me of my local bus company. There is one line where a bus only departs in 2 hour intervals. Kinda sucked because that's the bus I took most of the time and I had to wait a long time for the next bus.
vid ideas:
- past bad design/planning ideas that somehow worked out
- past good ideas that somehow failed
- past bad ideas that failed horribly
also a series on US cities transit systems and how they could potentially be saved or become used/popular (or not) would be pretty interesting since they seem to make pretty much every bad idea possible
also I'd be real curious to see a 'Reece designs the best possible toronto city/regional transit system from scratch' vid or series! like all things on the table, what do you do?
The off-peak frequency is something that needs attention. The user-pay crowd favours reducing frequencies off-peak and weekends, ignoring the benefit to the whole system of a frequent service. Cost recovery needs to be considered much mire broadly tha each individual vehicle. The Oxford Tube and X90 bus/coach services between London and Oxford are great case studies. They run a 10 minute or so service 24 hours a day. Paying a driver to run a near empty bus in the middle of the night is clearly worth it to the commercial operators to build value in the turn-up-and-ride-any-time brand.
And more importantly, the two people on the midnight bus home may may well have travelled in during peak hours. If the midnight bus was withdrawn, they would have to drive in, therefore losing two passengers on the peak service.
15min frequency is the bare minimum IMO. Less frequent than that and you make sure the only people who's gonna use your line are those who are too poor for a car. Montreal's 2 industrial neighbourhood have 30min frequency so 95% of the workers get there by car.
An example of infrequent busses ruining things: our holiday home in the alps, has a bus that goes every 2 hours to the towns with lifts. This is simply not enough to use them and we use the car to drive to a parking lot there.
If the bus would move to every 15 or even 30 minutes, things would definitely change, even if the car trip itself only takes 15 minutes.
What I often notice is that there seems to be a relationship between vehicle length and distances from station to station. For a 15 m bus, 200 m distances are normal, a 30 m tram might have station spacings of 400 m and metros with >100 m length tend to stop every 800 m or so (heavily dependent on city though). Regional rail with 150-200 m trains will have even longer distances.
This is why I don't think that frequency and vehicle lengths correlate. Basically, if you are building a metro network for rapid transit and planning for trains a lot shorter than 100 m, you were wrong at the point where you chose the metro. Maybe you should just build a tram network/line if you are not expecting that much demand.
Well that depends, part of this is that the cost of building a station with a 100 meter platform is much higher than a bus stop!
And then you have Montreal, where the trains on the green metro line are 150m and the distance between stations gets as small as 300m (McGill and Peel)
The only option I have to get to the city other than a car is a bus, and the frequency is abysmal: half an hour during summer, one hour during winter. No wonder nobody wants to use it. I wish they'd increase frequency or, better yet, build some sort of train.
Here is a bus horror story. In Philadelphia, there is a bus running in a sickle-like shape numbered 19. I live by that route and my school is one or two major streets away. the problem isn't getting to school. it is getting home. Originally, I had to go all the way to oxford so my daily trips would form a loop to get home efficiently. Luckily, the schedule changed last month and now, I can do the reverse of getting to school to get home the fastest. The only problems now are crossing the street and that van that blocks the view of the bus stop in the morning.
Got to agree that Capacity and frequency can go hand-in-hand to increase the transit service quality, but maybe you can also look into timed refurbishment and replacement of transit assets too
In Singapore, the Alstom Metropolis C751A trains are undergoing refurbishment one train at a time, whereas the Alstom (Bombardier Movia) CR151 trains are arriving at the Tuas Depot a few trainsets at a time to slowly replace the C151, C651 and C751B trains.
Not sure about the similar refurbishment and replacement programmes of transit assets in other cities, but perhaps you can look into this topic.
We are always doing that stuff in Hamburg. Both the DT4 with the new interior and screens on the U-Bahn and the Br474 with new open gangways on the S-Bahn.
Next step is to install ETCS on all S-Bahn stock so it will eventually be automated, which is a "first" in Germany because these are DB trains on the main network (at least in theory).
They did something similar here in Shanghai with the original six car Siemens train sets on Lines 1 and 2. As new 8 car Alstom trains were introduced in 2007 or so, the 6 car trains were withdrawn a few at a time and refurbished to make them 8 car trains, so that eventually the entire fleet for those two lines became 8 car trains.
Here in Winston-Salem, there's 1 bus per hour. Per. Hour. And they wonder why no one rides it.
Frequency is just one of those easily understood topics, and so very easily misunderstood. There is a reasonable limit to what frequency you can expect where. I can't say I want a train every 90 seconds on my regional rail network which runs into villages more than a hundred kilometers from the city.
I want that. I can't afford it ecconomically, but you bet I want it.
Haha a good line for sure, understanding where different frequencies are appropriate isn't always straightforward!
@@horacewonghy 10-15 min sounds fine. But 30-60 minutes, now you are being highly vague. Not an easy schedule to communicate.
@@horacewonghy Better to have during the whole day the 10-15min and not only during rush-hour times. Making public transit more flexible for people that work part-time jobs and people that are going into the shopping district.
During the evening slowing down to every 30 mins and around midnight once every hour.
If the public transport system uses rails, perhaps between 1 and 3 in the morning no service as that is the time rail/cable maintenance can be done without messing up timetables.
Such a vital concept!
I wish my local transit agency would watch this...
When I grew up, I lived in a small suburb on the edge of London where we had a half hourly train service to Waterloo, and 1 hourly local bus service. It was pretty bad and we mostly had to drive, walk or cycle around. If you missed a train or bus, it was super annoying and you might miss an appointment or be late for something. When I got married and we moved closer to London, our train service to Waterloo was every 15 minutes and that made a HUGE difference. I didn't have to plan as much because I knew that if I just turned up at the station, the worst case scenario was I'd have to wait just 15 minutes for the next train. Buses also ran about once every 5 minutes. Again, you just rock up to the bus stop and wait, and before you know it, you're on your way. Night and day difference. BUT, unfortunately, this type of service is only viable for city centre or inner urban areas. Outer suburbs just can't justify the higher frequencies because the density and demand isn't high enough to justify the cost.
looking at the frequency of the busses in my city tends to make me sad, it's usually considering "frequent" to mean 20ish minute intervals which is bad.
Same for me, because bus routes in other areas arriving more frequently with some having 10 to 5 minute intervals, that is way better compared to ours, but not the worst since we have a bus route serving a more rural area operating at 40 minute intervals.
The king of frequency is cable cars. I know cable cars are super slow, but you can use them continuously.
As the acclaimed Jarrett Walker says in his blog, Frequency equals freedom.
Haha did you watch the video yet?
@@RMTransit it's a great video, and worth repeating!
San Diego MTS needs to see this video. They want to build an airport trolley with 15 minute frequencies, which sucks because Downtown is only 12-15 minutes away. Worse of all, they would interline this airport trolley with two other lines that also run only 15 minute frequencies currently, and branch off to the airport via a flat junction.
I like one seat rides to the airport but not if I have to wait 15 minutes. San Diego needs to increase all trolley frequencies to 7.5 minutes and build a people mover from the airport to Middletown Trolley Station. For passengers between Downtown and the Airport the max wait time for the APM and Trolley combined will then be 7 minutes, including transfers. Far better than a one seat ride with 15 minute frequencies.
Thanks Reece for an excellent video. I (Roger Sexton) agree with almost everything you say. I have one point about buses and trams which is not applicable to fully segregated metros. European experience suggests that a frequency of better than every 6 minutes for buses/trams is not necessarily beneficial. The buses/trams will tend to bunch into 'convoys' (notorious in London). If a bus route running every six minutes gets crowded then it is better to put on larger buses (articulated or double-deck) or even convert the route to a tramway. (Same number of drivers - much greater capacity,)
Bunching can certainly be a problem, but then you wouldn't be providing a consistent headway so I'd argue it doesn't necessarily apply!
@@RMTransit that is a very valid point. You could probably do a video on bus scheduling.
I live in Hamburg and I know a lot of bus drivers. They manage their speed to keep up with the schedule, but have no idea about what is happening live. I'm pretty sure it's like that the world over.
Is there any networked software for buses?
@@almerindaromeira8352 I know that Zürich has a control station(Leitstelle), that has a software to see every tram and bus live on each line or projected on a map, but I don‘t know if the drivers out on the streets have other tools than radio contact to this control station
@@marcor815 At least the trams in Zurich have a display for the ‘driver’ that shows how many (tens of) seconds they are ahead or behind schedule. It’ll say something like -40 or +20 to let them know whether they should slow down or speed up a bit. One can see it updating when they open the doors at which moment it might jump from -40 to +20.
The bunching argument was used in Zurich when, 15 years ago, they introduced bi-articulated busses on the busiest bus routes to increase capacity (instead of increasing the frequency). Currently they maximum frequency is 8x per hour, ie, every 7.5 minutes.
It's not just frequency and the number of transfers needed, but when a transit system starts and ends service for the day, how many fares are required and the ability to carry large items and a lot of items. A transit system that basically only operates from 06:30 to 23:00 is useless for many journeys, as is the hub and spoke system that too many smaller transit operate. My wife and I go by car to get groceries for several reasons: it’s convenient (no schedules), it’s direct (no scenic routes), allows us to go to several nearby stores and allows us to store our purchases instead of having to carry them with us while we go into other stores. Back when I was living alone I’d bicycle, except in bad weather or winter, to get my groceries as it was very convenient and much faster than transit.
Niagara Falls Transit has got to have the screwiest transit around. For intercity transit there's Niagara Regional Transit. In the urban area is Niagara Falls Transit run by the city and WEGO (should be named WEDONTGO) run by the Niagara Parks Commission. Extra fares, I believe, are required to switch from one to another. (I tried checking this out on their websites and got no clarity.) WEGO operates on Lundy’s Lane, a major arterial, which should be operated by Niagara Falls Transit, as well as along the Niagara River. An improvement of sorts is coming in that the transit systems of Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Welland and the Niagara Region are all becoming one. However that still leaves out the WEGO, which should be either taken over by the new system or at least integrated with it.
High frequency means you don't need to keep times in mind, you just walk up to the station and know the next train will be there within a few minutes.
It also makes coordinating connections a lot easier because you don't need to adjust timetables of different lines so they allow transfers; if they run every five minutes or less, people can transfer without losing much time.
I would love to see them every 15 minutes. Where I live the normal is every 30 minutes, and buses not actually running is common which turns that into an hour.
Cant emphasize how good "freedom frequency" relation is. High frequency is the freedom from concern about missing the train/bus; its freedom about picking the train/bus you want depending on crowd or whatever; its the freedom from any concern about transport at all.
Another point. Making 1 metro line in city center from 10 min frequency to 2 min frequency can increase ridership of other transit lines as well for routes that involve transfers to/from the line. It makes even more previously impossible routes/trips possible.
In general, shorter routes or routes with lower average speeds (like say in the city center for metro or streetcars) demand higher frequencies. Consistent frequency is also extremely important. Nobody will risk waiting 10 min at best or 30 min at worst for a 10 min trip if other options are available. This is why you wont find any metro system in city center with inconsistent 15 min frequency in peak hours.
Hi, I think a nice topic would be to start fom the basics: given a city with no public transit how to identify possible routes, services and which would be a reasonable revenues/operating cost ratio.
You should make a video on feeder services
Frequency is also something which Brussels needs to improve to simply cope with the booming transit ridership before COVID, and even now, transit ridership is recovering at an incredible rate...
When u said feeder services my mind hopped straight to Foodora for some reason lol smh
Good idea!
I have worked for some years as an amateur software developer on an open source game called Simutrans-Extended. Some years ago, I implemented a system in which passengers all have a fixed travel time budget (randomised for each passenger trip within a range, biased to lower values), and will always choose the lowest travel time option to get to their destination (travel time including waiting time as well as journey time). Players very quickly found that this meant that the frequency is of the highest importance in attracting passenger ridership.
Best line is the line where you dont need to look on the timetable.
I love how often your stock footage is from Prague
Bus also wins from car when you don't have to find parking.
Coming from a NYC experience, when trains are not running as frequently as it should (most of the time), and the delays cause arrival times to be unpredictable (most of the time?), the station dwell times tends to get quite a bit worse. People tend to try to rush and hold the doors a lot more when the next train is 10 to 15 minutes away. It's easy to criticize that as selfish behavior, but I would argue that it's a natural reaction to bad and uncertain frequency.
NYC is still the best in the US when it comes to public transit, but it's got a lot of work to do to serve its 8 million people well.
I am impressed with your knowledge of the literature surrounding transit frequency. One element that I think quantifies frequency importance is that most people "feel" waiting time as being 2x longer than travel time. A PhD into a floor of transit frequency is something that I would love to consider myself! (I am currently in graduate school in transportation engineering)
"the vegetables of mobility" is a phrase I'm going to have to adopt.
You mentioned how we managed to handle high frequencies in the past, but now we do those frequencies much more safely, and I was reminded of how the current most frequent rail service in the UK is the Victoria Line- 36 trains/hour in the morning/evening peaks- however this isn't the most frequent rail service to operate in the UK ever, which goes to what is now the Northern Line back in the 1920s, when 44 trains/hour were reported, or a train every 70-80 seconds.
The term for why a car is great is friction. A car is a very low friction way to travel. If you have one you get it and go you don’t have to think about it. High frequency transit is lower friction then low frequency transit as you don’t have to think about when the bus comes.
It’s the same reason Starbucks wants you using their app with a credit cad auto reload. It’s a lower friction way to pay for your coffee. It also disconnects you from the money a lot more then handing over cash at the register.
High frequency is definitely the best thing you can do, but well timed transfers can make lower frequencies ok.
My city does this aspect quite well. Trams run every 7,5 min during the day, busses every 15. So for every second tram there is a bus connection and it’s mostly timed, the connector routes wait for the tram to arrive, so it’ll always work. Trams aren’t really timed to each other, but the average wait isn’t that long, so it’s fine.
This completely changes in the evening. Between 7 and midnight trams only run every 15 minutes and busses every 30. To make this bearable all tram routes and most major bus routes meet for a huge timed transfer at the central station. This ensures you only have to wait for the first vehicle, no matter if you need to transfer or not. And after midnight they do the same every hour with the night busses.
This system isn’t perfect, since it requires all routes to run to that central station, making some lines take slightly weird routes, but it makes the mediocre service in the evening much better then it sounds in the beginning.
It seems so obvious to me that frequency is (almost) everything. I spent most of my life in transit-oriented cities and it totally made me entitled when it comes to transit, so whenever I have to wait more than 5 minutes for a train, it makes me mad. I don't want to check the schedule, I don't want to plan anything, I want to be able to go to the nearest station, wait 30 seconds and get on a train. I usually wait less than 2 minutes for the RER during rush hour and I'm used to it. It really is the best thing in the world to just get down in the station and know that you won't have to wait.
Switzerland is doing pretty good regarding connection between low frequency lines like train lines and regional buses. Schedules are timed in such a way that you rarely need to wait more than 15 minutes. And if your intercity train (or any long distance service) arrived late, then your connecting regional train will wait for you! It's very convenient, especially on lines with an hourly service. Though higher frequencies are still better, but this system works as a substitute. Because there's nothing worse than needing to wait 45 minutes for your train because of bad scheduling!
Anaheim is an interesting case. The main Anaheim station does not have a direct connection to Riverside, the only Metrolink station on the Orange County section of the LOSSAN corridor that does not. The 91/Perris line connects to LOSSAN to the north of it; the IE/OC line connects to the south. So, it has fewer Metrolink trains than other nearby OC stations like Fullerton and Santa Ana.
It *is* overbuilt for how much service it currently sees, but it doesn't deserve the dig from Reece. The most current (2018) state rail plan is aiming for intercity (i.e. Amtrak/Pacific Surfliner) and regional (i.e. Metrolink) service every 30 minutes each, and the station was designed as a terminus for CAHSR, whose most current (2020) business plan assumes 20-24 high speed trains per day from Anaheim. It was also planned to be a terminus for the ARC streetcar project which was cancelled in 2018. (The station opened in 2014.)
as a parisian though :
our metros aren't that long, but on peak hours there's one every 2 minutes, while off peak most lines have one every 5 to 6 minutes.
RERs, which are our regional rail (suburban rail) that also goes through Paris with closer stations more like metros do, run every 4 minutes on most lines peak hours, and 15 minutes off peak.
even buses follow this, well most of them. of the 40+ lines I know of, only 2 run every 30minutes off peak, and these are "industry" centric lines - lines that only go from a metro / rer / light rail station to an industry pole, and there are in general several bus lines going there, although taking several routes
A good example of this last type of bus use is Velizy-Villacoublay in the south west of Paris. Think you can see the same around Massy Palaiseau, even as the west / south west parts of Paris have always been bad transport wise
Also, for transfers with hour long waiting times, I can only shudder at this. With the lines I just told, a lot of times the bus will leave in front of you, as you exit the metro station while walking fast, and it's enraging having then to wait 10 / 15minutes. Can't imagine what it would be like having to wait an hour !
This is a very concise yet thorough explanation. Very good video :)
Thanks Thomas!
I live in the Myrtle Beach area, and our local bus system (Coast RTA) has headways of no less than 1 hour for there 'local' services. Coast RTA also tries to cover a large area, but the population of the four largest cities combined is still less than 100,000 people, so in trying to cover so much ground, it also spreads itself too thin to be a reliable transit network.
The DC metro is currently crippled by reduced frequency due to the STILL out of commission 7000 series rolling stock. Trains coming as far apart as every 30 minutes on outlying stations. It is essentially reduced to a bad regional rail system and ridership has plummeted. Metro could de-couple their 6 car older train sets into sets of 2 car trains running more frequently to improve the functionality of the system, yet they have done nothing. The system is practically useless unless you are on a leisurely weekend trip into the city for dining and entertainment
Related to this, spatial frequency and coverage is important for competing with automotive travel. If people feel they have to have their own cars to go lots of places where the transit just doesn't go (or they live where it just doesn't go) or where (due to hub-and-spoke layout) they have to go WAY IN and then WAY BACK OUT to use transit, then they are less likely to use transit at all. This problem is especially visible on rail transit maps, but is not limited to rail transit -- plenty of bus systems have the same problem.
The Vienna Metro lines have a frequency of basically 2 minutes (tho I do recall having experienced a wait time of even just 1 (ONE) minute too) between trains and some buses and tram lines going every 5-7 minutes during the rush hours of the day.
We are also only now starting to build a fully automated line, but as far as I know there will still be one operator be there on the train (at least in the beginning of that line going in service), just to make sure nothing's amiss.
Here in Halifax the metro goes everywhere in the city, however the service is not frequent. Lines that do you have frequent service get bogged down in the Core The city because the streets are small and full of cars. After moving here from Toronto I bought a car because driving is just so much easier and takes less time than using the bus/ferry systems here
In Budapest at peak hours the M4 metro line runs every 2-3 minutes. There is now a reconstruction on the M3 line and the articulated replacement buses come every 45 seconds an its STILL crowded.
Edit: the M4 runs at 10 minutes frequency even at 4 in the morning. I think that a headway that is more than 20 minutes (excluding night sevice) is just simply bad.
If the frequency is more then ~10 Minutes, I check the timetable and plan for one specific conection.
If the frequency is higher and I roughly know the travel-time, I go without checking when the trams or busses exactly run.
So whenever I‘m in my home-village with a bus every 15 Minutes I always check the time before leaving the house, but when I‘m in town in Zürich where there is 7.5 min frequency ,I hardly check the time before heading for the tram or Bus stop.
I think I‘m not alone with this.
Being on Yonge, smack between subway stations in North Toronto, is imprisoning. I can either walk 1km either direction, or wait up to 30min for the 97. It’s unacceptable.
For me frequency is key. In the 80s the rail services were cut down in my town which made the service dreadful to the point I started driving in to central London as it was more convenient to drive there then dump the motor and hop on the Tube. Since the early 00ies new services have been added defacto restoring frequency and so it's now easier to jump on a train again. There is nothing worse than missing your train and having to wait half an hour for another, especially during business hours and doubly so if you didn't miss it but it was cancelled.
From your thumbnail I'd say frequency is Eglington!
Frequency is really important to me so this video is suitable for me. In Halton Region of the GTA the buses aren’t that frequent for example. But everywhere it definitely needs to be more frequent
Talking of frequency our Victoria line I’ve got off a train at kings cross the train had left the platform and on no time at all another is racing into the platform even at Walthamstow or Brixton they have stepping back the train operator gets out of his cab and another is getting in at the other end and the train is off ,ATO on the line helps in this ,on the subject of using the word transit in the U.K. for eg I worked for tower transit at Westbourne Park garage on London route 328 and we did have a bus company up north called Cleveland transit ,take care Reece ,Mark
Here where I live, during rush hour, our commuter rail runs every 4 minutes and off rush hour it’s every 8. The point is that I live in a countryside city and the company has more frequent lines
I live in Stockholm, Sweden, and the subway there is usually on a 10-minute schedule. However, that's for the end-lines. In the city proper two or three lines meet up, which means frequency goes up by that much. And despite local complaints (locals always complain about local services), it's pretty reliable. Busses run every 5-30 minutes depending on time and how crowded the line is, usually 10. As long as it's reliable, I think that's good enough, even if it can be better. Then there are also a few light rails, commuter train, ferries, and the regular national train network. All in all, you don't need a car in Stockholm unless you have a job that requires it, like being a parent, and you can get pretty much wherever you want without difficulty.
Hong Kong transportation is like the best it has good time for how long you need to wait for bus, MTR or even minibus
My hometown of Conegliano (Veneto, NE Italy) and nearby Vittorio Veneto, both with a population of 30-35k, each have a small network of three "diametral" urban bus lines. These operate under a "boomerang" concept. There is a hub stop located in the town centre, from which all the buses leave at minutes .15 and .45. They ride to their destination and back to the centre following a route which is designed to take between 25 and 28 minutes (round trip), so that all the buses arrive at the central hub at around min. 12-13 and 42-43. They stop for 2-3 minutes, allowing passengers a timed, guaranteed connection between lines and drivers to change shifts etc. The frequency is low, sure, but to me this is a pretty clever concept to service small towns with a regular and reliable bus service that allows pax to reach most corners of the city.
The system in Conegliano is far from perfect though, as it does not serve other communes in the urban area, and I am currently developing a project to transform the system into a suburban "boomerang" network at little additional cost, to present to the city council and the transit agency.
If you @RMTransit were interested in making a video about the "boomerang" system/concept, I'd be glad to contribute.
Thanks for the video RM, my favourite types of videos of yours are these exploring concepts and best practices knowledge.
Definitely agree. Except on vegetables which are very yummy.
Would love to hear people’s opinions on real time bus arrival & scheduling software as in google maps & their impact. For me, I moved from Manhattan which had minimal wait requirements to the Bronx just before NY’s BusTime system was made. I felt so cut off at first because I’d wait a highly variable amount of time in the elements. But once BusTime came out I could effectively time my walk to never make me wait more than three minutes at a bus stop. Same for leaving a bar/restaurant. Really revolutionary for me.
Extremely helpful. To the point where I won't ride any transit without it unless it's either extremely frequent, or I have no other choice.
I think frequency is important but reliability is also important. Definitely on longer distance services where you have 30 min regional rail service but 20% of the trains are delayed this now increases your wait time by however much the service is delayed. Unreliable service also makes interchanging more difficult because a delay will cause you to miss to miss your connection. This is my primary reason for disliking "high frequency" 15min bus service on a decently planned service the bus can arrive anywhere from 5 minutes early to 5 minutes late this means worst case you will have to wait 10 minutes extra for a short trip within the city that feels like a massive waste.
I think you need to increase one if you have to reduce the other. A regional rail service with a 30 minute interval is generally fine, as long as the trains show up on time, most of the time, people can plan their journey around the timetable to some degree. A 5 minute interval metro is also fine, it doesn't really need to follow a timetable since you can just walk on to the platform and expect a train to show up within a short wait. But a 15 minute bus service that may show up between 0-10 minutes late nearly all the time, is most certainly not fine.
I really do wish my local transit authority would figure this out, rather than replacing a 13 minute drive to downtown with an hour and a half long bus ride with a transfer step, and then bullying people into trying to use their transit. No wonder everyone hates them and just drives instead.
And all that’s assuming the transfer actually works and the buses are all following the schedule right, which they semi-regularly don’t.
As pt can double you times vs a car, no one want to be in bad weather or if you need to connect to another service
It can but it shouldn't, especially if it's frequent!
This is why I really wonder if the future of transit in smaller/mid-sized cities isn't fully automated Personal Rapid Transit. I can see where an elevated guideway system would be quicker, cheaper, and easier to install with small pod vehicles that show up on demand and take you directly to your destination with no stops. As computing gets better and better, a system could hold hundreds or even thousands of pod cars. Since the pod cars would be mass produced and wouldn't need all of the components of a car, they could be built at a cheap price. Parking wouldn't be necessary. Individual apartment buildings and office towers could get dedicated stations.
So basically self driving cars? Pretty sure those already exist. And even if you don't have to park them they still wouldn't solve the problem of traffic jams, in fact it may make the problem worse because these things would all be on the roads at the same as demand peaks at rush hour.
The reality is cities, big and small, will have to prioritize walkability, bikeability, and public transport to create a liveable urban environment for everyone that is sustainable. The podification of our transport system(cars) is what got North America in this mess in the first place and we must do everything in our power to reverse the damage and create an equitable and sustainable future for our cities.
@@Androfier There’s a huge difference between automated vehicles on a dedicated guideway that operate 100% safely all day vs. individually-owned self-driving cars that drive on the road alongside cyclists, pedestrians, and human-driven cars. It’s like saying an on-street tram and a subway in a tunnel are the same thing because they’re both trains. PRT has been slow to roll out but there are places already using them successfully. It seems like the sweet spot between convenience (pods come on demand and go only to their selected destination), cost (far cheaper than building train lines), and getting personal vehicles off the road.
@Zaydan Naufal No, I’m talking about PRT which already exists in several places. The Morgantown PRT has 73 vehicles and 5 stations and has operated reliably since the 1970s. Even Heathrow airport has its own system. This concept can be scaled up to a larger system. The Morgantown system’s cost per trip is only $2.01, which is quite low. The NYC Subway, for instance, charges $2.75/ride and still only has about a 51-52% fare box recovery ratio.
@@douglasjgallup Haven’t most locals in Morgantown complained about the actual reliability of it? About how often they have to take buses when it breaks down?
There was a sign at one of the 54 Lawrence East bus stops a few years ago (right when they took away the posted times for the buses and replaced them with generic advertisements for the apps) where they put "10 minutes or better." Someone took a black marker and wrote "bullshit" lol
I remember the TTC saying they got positive feedback on getting rid of fixed times buses were supposed to be at stops in favour of having buses every 5/10/15 minutes in real-time so I don't know where they are with that idea.
Also TTC specific, but (if you haven't done so already) perhaps a video on the pros/cons of having almost exclusively horizontal (i.e. east-west) and vertical (i.e. north-south) lines across a network instead of routes that are more flexible in the areas they service.
My local bus service runs every 30 minutes to one hour depending on the route. Tried it once, never again. Completely unusable. Would rather pay the extra for Uber. Quite unfortunate.
I see the title I like immediately
I've heard and uttered complaints about the Suburbano line northwest of Mexico City. Lowest frequency is on sundays when four car trains run every 15 minutes, compared to weekday morning rush hour schedule with 8 car trains running every 6 minutes, or weekday evening rush hour schedule with 8 car trains running every 8 minutes. Most Metro and Metrobus BRT runs at 2 minute frequency and most of the rest of public transportation runs at frequencies in that range. In my opinion, 10 minutes is the tipping point for a reliable urban system. Anything longer than that stops being helpful enough to be taken into consideration.
On the other hand intercity frequency is a different issue. I'm aware that the bus frequency from Central del Norte to Pachuca is every 10 minutes, from TAPO to Puebla every 5 minutes, from Observatorio to Toluca every 10 minutes or from Tasqueña to Cuernavaca every 10 minutes. As you well note, the demand and the competition must be the driving force behind the frequency of service in transport.
As Jarrett Walker AKA Human Transit would say: Frequency is freedom!
Pretty much the Singapore Metro and London Underground networks have the highest frequencies during peak times so the time between a train finishing closing it’s doors to the next train starting to open it’s doors is only 90 seconds! :)
"Every 10 minutes is bad for subway" *Laughs in WMATA*
I have used London transportation routes many times in my life it is a great relief when if one train is full, I get the next one in only 3 mins, kudos to the Metropolitan line and the Hammersmith and City lines.
Vegetables can be pretty good with garlic, butter, maybe a little minced salami in the saute pan...!
As for frequency (transit, not vegetables), much depends on the weather, weather protection, and vehicle protection. Five minutes in a good spot is very different from five with cars racing by four feet away (imperial!), or in 30 degree cold (F!), or under the blazing sun.
The TTC seems to have forgotten that. Just look at their own reliability studies on routes and their 'solutions' for that is to make routes more infrequent and by extension less reliable and which means less passengers, less money and more service cuts and increased fares for crappy service
please make a video about restrooms at transit stations
Where I live there absolutely are none. I just expect I’m going to have to pee outside someone using transit since it takes so long to get places and make transfers.
I work for a university bus company and our most frequent routes are to parking lots lmao
Time is a major factor in the general soup of factors, but for me cost is a big one. Part of the reason I'd like to see the Granby line rebuilt by Exo is, even without eventual conversion to a REM line, a train leaving towards downtown every half hour in the morning and back in the evening would significantly reduce the cost of driving to Chambly and taking an express bus downtown.