I didn't want to have to make this video... | Frequency Matters
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- čas přidán 19. 09. 2022
- Cities around the world are building more and more transit, but it seems like a lot of them have forgotten about the most important thing for a transit system - service frequency. Let's talk about it!
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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece Martin (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
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Amen! Low frequency is a killer, and if it is also unpredictable that's unbearable. Welcome to Atlanta...
Low volumes creates low frequency. Low frequency creates low volumes. That is why it is called MASS transit. You need the mass for it to function. Low frequency and volume then equals low fare revenues. Low revenue is the end of the mass transportation.
Can you please explain that to Deutsche Bahn?
I have looked at making several trips in the northeast by Amtrak, and while a single leg of the journey being 6hrs vrs 3 in a car is bad, its the 1-2 hr layover that seals the deal for just taking a car on the interstate.
Would i rather take a train, yes.
Would i like to arrive before sunset, bigger yes.
If it was a 15min layover it would be alot more bearable, and probably would have garnered enough investment for a car competitive travel time. (And intercity trips are generally more forgiving about poor frequency, just look at plane schedules, and even planes have multiple trips a day for the major intercity routes)
Come on up to Knoxville. The KAT route planning app actually suggested that I walk four miles down the shoulder of US-129 (widely regarded as one of the most dangerous highways in Tennessee) because the frequency from Neyland to UT Hospital is so bad.
Atlanta is one of those cities that is massive and needs to get it in gear transit wise
When I moved from Chicago, the “shining city in a hill” for public transit outside the East Coast, to Vancouver, the biggest thing that struck me is that I NEVER look at bus or train schedules. I know that my bus is never more than 10 minutes and my train is never more than 3 minutes away (as long as nothing went very very wrong)
@@zacharywhitehead2622 I think you misread OP (or I'm misreading you). His comment was about how much of an upgrade Vancouver's service was over Chicago's.
Sadly that's only true out to maybe Coquitlam to the east and around 100th St. in Surrey to the south, if you're on the main corridors. It is getting better thanks to the Rapidbus lines, but those are pretty new and still getting rolled out.
Still, where it is that frequent the SkyTrain really punches above its weight, considering that there are only 3 lines which only service one corridor each, which seems to be about half of what other cities mentioned in the video have to work with.
Uhm... Vancouver WA or Vancouver BC? Because I live in metro Van BC and the transit was so painful I gave up and bought a car. Maybe if you live and work right next to a SkyTrain station...
@@TheoWerewolf I assuming by Metro Vancouver you mean "not the city of Vancouver", in which case, yeah, like I said, Burnaby is the limit of full reliability eastward, Coquitlam is okay along Como Lake or near SkyTrain but otherwise terrible, everything east of that is basically only halfway decent at getting you to a SkyTrain station at rush hour, if you are near a major corridor. South of the Fraser good luck, maybe Richmond is okay but Surrey and Langley are pain if you aren't near King George or Surrey Central station.
In the city itself, however, and especially the downtown, I found it great. A little less useful west of Cambie St., but otherwise totally viable to live day to day without using a car
@@TheoWerewolf Same. Translink: it's why I drive. To get to Superstore: 9 minutes by car. 2 hours by Translink. (Edit: the Superstore in question is almost visible at 8:15)
"You can't judge the amount of people who want a bridge based on the amount of people who swim" - What a beautiful quote, I'm using that from now on.
I've tried to express the same idea, but never as neatly
The way I’ve always said this is by framing it through the user experience: if you’re stressing about catching this bus or that train, your system sucks. If you just know it takes roughly an hour to get somewhere and you leave without checking the schedule, your system is great. The difference is frequency: if my train is once/30mins, I’m timing the journey precisely. If it’s once every five mins, I’m showing up when I feel like it.
I leave without checking the schedule all of the time but that's because the buses in my city are never on time. Heck, even at the start of the route they may be early, late, or not even show up.
Well, to put what you say more brutally, you can start your journey whenever the schedule of work, schools, daycare, &c. ALLOW you to start it. We rarely get to choose any of these timings and we never get to choose them all.
Not just frequency; timing too. It's great that I can get a train into the city! ...except that there's barely any weekend service and if you're not riding during the peak commuting hours of 7-10ish in the morning and 4-6ish in the evening, it may as well not exist. Makes it real hard to, say, enjoy the nightlife if all the public transit closes down at midnight /if you're lucky/.
This is why a city like NYC gets so much ridership. The subway is dirty and smells horrible, but I can expect the 1 train to show up within a few minutes even during off peak hours.
In contrast, DART has relatively clean trains and infrastructure, but not many people choose to ride the train due to low off peak frequency.
depends what route, but yea
i remember those days of living in NYC waiting for the 4 train during rush hour. you could literally see one train pulling out and look down the tunnel and see the lights of the next one right behind it.
except when the next express train is suddenly delayed by 20 min and is actually running local right now
NYC gets so much ridership cus everyone is on a tiny island and they all live, work and recreate in a 10 mile radius
@@steezmuffin thats the whole point of a city though
What's also important about high frequency is that it encourages trips to be made with far more transfers. When I was studying in London I would often make tube trips with 2 or even 3 transfers because I could almost always count on not having to wait very long for a train (they come every 2 minutes on average for most lines). But I don't want to be making transfers at all if it means I have to wait 10, 15, even 20 minutes for a vehicle *every time*.
Yes! When I'm going to work and I have to run to get a bus that arrived earlier than the schedule to get to a bus that will (hopefully) arrive on time, otherwise I will miss my bus and be late for 30 minutes - it's not fun :(
With transfer oriented transit systems it’s also important to implement things like hourly tickets/fares (per ride fares are still common in many systems), so that it’s much more convenient for the user
@@riilhiiro Or, you could make the transit free to use. Like, yknow, a public service.
@@nairsheasterling9457 oh how i wish
in the current economy atleast, you’d probably still pay it through taxes, just that if we have a progressive tax the rich would cover a lot of it which is good
but it probably has a lot of side effects
@@riilhiiro a few cities have experimented with free at point of use funding, with better success than they anticipated :) I have hope it can spread further
Low frequency + unpredictable timing = pissed off people who need to be on time = not going back to public transit if you have any other option. I once missed a meeting because I missed an “on the half hour” bus when I was 10 minutes early for the scheduled time. I haven’t used that last line on a business day since.
There's a reason we still remember the campaign promises of the facists in Italy. "Make the trains run on time" and then they actually fulfilled those promises and people were happy (until the evil stuff started). People NEED to be able to trust their mode of transportation, and unfortunately in America its often that the car is the most reliable choice because even with horrendous traffic you can still plan for the delays and often are still faster than the alternatives. (Also we are 1000x more tollerant of risks when we are under the illusion that we are in control, so the risk the bus is late is 1000x less acceptable than the risk you get yourself stuck in traffic or worse.)
@@jasonreed7522 - It is part of a wider problem in both bureaucracy and the government: they are both less and less concerned with the day-to-day problems that mean most to most people, and more concerned with things that are bigger scale or of more interest to themselves. Where one really notices it is policing, as police forces gradually stop dealing with all of the crimes that people are most likely to suffer and which matter most to them. Transit is another.
@@jasonreed7522 that said, it’s actually a myth that the trains ran on time under Mussolini. But Hitler cared about motorways for the same reason you laid out.
Denver just canceled a plan to widen highways and diverted the funds to its BRT
That's actually great news. Hope to hear more.
Anything's better than "just one more lane bro"
That’s good, but it can’t only do capital projects, it’s gotta fund more operations!
@@nlpnt We've seen what happens in Denver when you add one or two lanes to a road... it quickly fills up with more traffic, leaving us right back where we started.
W
This needs to be talked about more! my local bus route recently reduced frequency from every 15 minutes to every 20 minutes. It's astonishing how less convinient using the bus has become, unless part of a long distance trip I now just cycle places and have even been considering an e-bike to further reduce my dependency on low frequency transit
If I could afford to I would have resorted to driving...
@@stanislavkostarnov2157 Public transport was never for the 'ecology'. It's a way to get the poorest of the proles to and from work, and occasionally shops.
That's why so many places only run partially respectable service during commutes, with poor or absent service the rest of the time. Considering the billions of monies wasted on useless and virtue signalling wind and solar, it's obvious noone really cares.
Only really big cities get good service because otherwise the city would fail.
If politicians really cared, they'd spend those billions on public transport that doesn't suck, which would cut down on car use (and cut down on tax revenue).
Does your Government want to cut its tax revenue? No. That's why it will take a long time for progress, until it becomes more profitable to run more public transport, or less profitable to not run more public transport. Well, that's basically when a place becomes a dense enough city.
WAW 15 to 20? The problem there is everything else around the bus, the center if Munich has busses every 20min..... so like uhhh its plenty convenient for me because everything else is also on 20m timer
Our main city bus lines typically come every 20 minutes during the main times, *but* the main routes typically have two city bus lines (in my case, also two regional lines with I believe hourly rhythms, which are usually not relevant to me). So that comes out to effectively 10 minutes (and yes, they're planned to really come with 10 minutes difference). Which seems to be fine in this city with between 310,000 and 320,000 inhabitants - the buses are well-used, and whenever there are traffic problems around the central hubs, buses can line up for some distance, so running them more often does not seem to be an option. We once (before my time) had trams, but there is really not enough room for a modern tram network, so buses are it. These are currently (too slowly for my taste, but these things are expensive) transitioned to battery electric, with loading options (from above) at the route ends.
I might also mention that sometime in the evening, the city buses switch to a completely different set of night bus routes and lines, cutely named N80 to N89, that run every 30 minutes at least to around midnight (after which I no longer need them, so I'm unsure how that continues except that it does) and are meant to cover the whole city with their somewhat more circuitous routes. I suspect that's two buses per line (one for each direction). They all meet at the main train station, where they are synchronized - that is, if it doesn't take too much time, they wait until passengers from the slowest bus had a chance to switch. Those are typically older buses, to keep expenses down; also, it seems that for similar reasons (which is, in my view, more objectionable), they created a different corporate entity to hire the night drivers so they could pay them less. Hurrah capitalism.
Same for me. My local bus route had a frequency of 20 minutes per departure, except in rush hour, weekends and public holidays. Which is why most people here preferred minibuses, that have a higher frequency of every 5 to 10 minutes. The competition with minibus routes makes the bus ridership even lower.
It's much cheaper to use a bigger bus instead a smaller one more frequently.
In Germany we have some buslines, where the transportation company ordered a cab, so you can use it with your ticket or pay a little bit, some of them are by request, you have to call 1 hour before.
When I lived in the Hannover region, there was a night line, operating 2 times the night from Friday to Saturday and Saturday to Sunday. This replaces 6 different lines, the driver asks you, where you want to leave the bus, plans the route individually and the goal isn't to be at a specific place in time, but to get home.
I remember waiting almost 3 minutes for the next Yamanote line train in the morning rush. Ruined my morning.
Yamanote on morning rush? Imagine the line waiting the train.
Now I hear in peak it is 90 seconds?
The Yamanote Lines trains are so huge that they can actually impede ultra high frequencies!
Yamanote line train in the morning rush in 2022 may better than 1990's, coz you have more choice and better capacity train than that time, but still as sardines. XD
This so describes my world. Mississauga Ontario Transit was so frustrating due to the low frequency. And often the bus would come a few minutes early, which means If I wasn't at the stop early, I had to wait for VERY long time, even in major commute windows, for the next one. OUCH.
As someone who lives in York Region, I still foam at how much more frequent MiWay is...
UTM students waiting 40min for their bus home because their class ended a minute later than normal
@@TheHothead101 The 6E rolling dice to decide whether or not to keep running or to wait one hour and bunch up
I have seen a transit planner pointing out that agencies focus far too much on "on time" and not nearly enough on "interval".
If the bus is supposed to run every 15 minutes and every single bus on that line is 15 minutes late, no one will care. But if one is 12 minutes early and the one behind it is 12 minutes late, someone could stand on that stop for 38 minutes and not see a bus. THAT is unacceptable, even if it is only two buses out of 24 in 8 hours that weren't on time.
I know all too well the heartbreak of being a hundred yards down a side street and seeing the bus go by, early, knowing that the next one will be in 30 minutes or an hour.
And MiWay is middle of the pack in the Toronto region!
Agreed. It's sad to see empty buses sometimes (as much as I like the quiet). Nothing stings more than missing a bus that comes every 30 minutes (or any transit vehicle for that matter at that frequency). Frequency also improves reliability, or at least a sense of dependability. Every now and then we'll have a bus that just straight up doesn't arrive. I do think every 15 minutes should be a baseline for buses, not just BRT. Operating budgets and all, it's hard to see half empty (or completely empty) buses as a good value for taxpayers even if the alternative is more frequent and consequently more expensive service. Would love to see a Skytrain type of thing across more North American cities, cause drivers eat up a good amount of the yearly budget (at least where I live). The BRT-esque service in my region has bendy buses come every 12 minutes, which is definitely better than the every hour that happens on some routes. I don't live in a very dense city, and I do live in a suburb of said city, but regardless I would use more frequent transit more frequently. Cause if transit can't be fast, it should at least be easy; and if it isn't easy, it should probably be faster. Would be cool if there was more commuter rail, might be helpful, would have to look up rail lines going through my area. Still falls prey to freight and it's transit de-prioritization though.
One like equals one transit agency board member watching this video
👇
Edit: that's a lot of board members 😧
Brt should be 10 minutes MAX because it has all the expensive infrastructure built for speedy rides and minimal congestion
To ameliorate the empty bus problem, they could use smaller buses to make up the extra frequency. Would probably be faster to train drive the smaller vehicles too.
"Every now and then we'll have a bus that just straight up doesn't arrive"
CTA, I'm looking at you. Last couple times I've been in Chicago, this has happened quite a few times. Ghost Buses, we call them. The trains are having this issue too. Then again, CTA consistently says that this issue is due to them being understaffed, which is understandable seeing as literally every business is understaffed nowadays.
It is a chicken and egg issue, if the bus run very frequently and reliable, make it much easier it to travel by transit, then more of ridership, which make higher frequency more efficient. The other hand , less frequent service make riding bus a hassel, hence fewer or even no ridership, and it can just be worse and worse.
This feels like a video in an of itself lol
Love my local transit here in Shanghai. My local Metro line has 4-6 minute headways all day, and the main local bus routes run every 15-20 minutes.
lol.
China's public transportation should be noted as a global example, it's fantastic and IMO as top tier as urban Japan
@@racecardriverrr4201 i disagree. If you look at Chinese highways they're still getting clogged up all the time. Iirc they have had jams lasting hours during the rush hour. Chinese public transport might be good, but if situations like these are happening then it kind of shows how it's not good enough
@@_CaptainCookie The motorways are only clogged because
A. They exist, causing induced demand
B. China simply has an insanly high population. Even if millions use public transport, a couple hundred thousand using cars will clog up a road network pretty fast. If the rest of the world (except for a couple dense cities) had the same public transportation as China, they would see a lot less less car usage.
The issue is, public transportation is most effective in places of high density
@@_CaptainCookie not to burst your bubble but you can have a good transit system and still have traffic jams. Prague has an incredibly developed transit system, and it's also clogged up all the time.
The advantage is a metro commuter doesn't have to deal with the traffic jam whatsoever.
Vancouver should get props for the Skytrain. It's great. Really useful for certain destinations and runs so often you never have to think about it. Vancouver busses, particularly in the suburbs, are still terrible in frequency. It's very clear that they only look at spreadsheets and on a spreadsheet they don't measure how long people stood around waiting. It's also clear that the planners don't use the service themselves.
Whoever runs the network concentrates more on labour costs and running fewer / larger vehicles rather than running smaller vehicles more often. They only measure number of seats instead of measuring average travel time. I have never seen a transit employee out counting how many people are waiting at a hub or asking how long they waited for.
Metro Vancouver is pretty hit-and-miss for buses. Frequency is pretty good within Vancouver proper but it drops off the further out you go. The TTC is a solid model for bus frequency - you can still get 10 min frequency late at night.
I use the BRT line shown in the thumbnail, the problem is that line specifically is frequent but everything else with YRT is minimum every 15-30 minutes which is extremely inconvenient for bus changes.
Totally agreed that mass transit service frequency really is a magic bullet that has many compounding benefits. I suspect a major reason that many US transit systems don’t have better operating frequencies is nothing more than money. Running a (non-automatic) train or bus twice as often requires roughly twice as much staff. US transit has an easier time getting capital improvement budget, but service improvement budget is hard to come by, because there is no ribbon to cut.
That really depends. If your driver spend all day sitting in taffic (and I'm sure they do), you can increase frequency at no cost by giving RoW or passing lanes.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427, I live in major US city which has a light rail line that runs almost entirely on separate right of way. Traffic congestion isn’t a major factor in its service pattern. Yet, on the mainline spine through downtown, which interlines two routes, the peak single direction frequency is six trains per hour and off peak it may be four per hour. This is embarrassingly poor service frequency for a city of this size. Increasing service frequency would necessarily mean doubling the number of drivers they have to pay to drive the trains.
@@ScottAtwood Fair enough, sometimes its just really stupid people in charge. But often, at least with buses, I do believe frequency can be increased without a large increase in drives simply by using them better.
@@ScottAtwood Well the trams and buses have 10-15 services per hour during peak per line. in the center, you roughly have 6 directions. 11 lines (*2 since running trough). And about 4-8 (up to the point, where the rail lines fan out) trains (3 directions). (not counting the rapid trains, going to other cities).
in some directions, this adds up to over 30 connections per hour.
City: 138k, agglomeration (city with 70 political independent parts, suburbs...) 419k.
To think, that salaries in Switzerland are sky high compared to the US, this is insane. But our highways only have two-three lanes...
Public Transport only works, if it's equal good mode of transportation for a lot of people. for that you need both, a comprehensive network and good enough frequencies. And yes, you don't pay full price: city defines the routes and frequencies, opens it for public bidding. transport companies bid. city, consumer protection, and companies negotiate prices and subsidies.
rough passenger numbers per day: Rail (covering area with about 1 mio people): 100'000/day, Mainlines of Tram, Bus: 200'000/day Other: 20'000/day? (To many companies involved.)
I’m in NZ Hamilton where buses every 10 mins actually sounds pretty good, but here, the wage issue is 100% the problem. Bus drivers have got so unhappy with their job that the bus network had to trim down the schedule to match the weekend times (less frequent)
I was blown away when I visited Buenos Aires when I saw the constant flow of busses going by. Without exaggeration, at least in the city centre and close environs, you will not wait more than 2 minutes for a bus.
Wow!
I had the same impression when I used the metro in Sao Paulo. In peak time you would literally be on your way every 1 minute 15 seconds (like a train left, then there would be a timer for 1:15, the train would arrive 15 seconds before the time was out, and by the time the whole 1:15 had passed you were already moving). It was so frequent that even though it is much bigger than the city where I currently live, the metro there felt emptier* because train were coming so often.
*Edit: And not because not many people use it. The daily ridership is bigger than the total population of where I live now.
Having a rail line like Denver or LA and then not opperating high frequency is crazy. LA in particular could have nearly NY levels of ridership of it tried the slightest.
The Expo Line in LA should’ve had grade separated express tracks to make the trip between DTLA and Santa Monica more competitive to the freeway, especially when the 10 is jammed and having an express train wiz by traffic would convert some drivers to take mass transit.
It doesn't help that one of the branches is a massive stub at the moment, though work is being done to change that.
@@97nelsn Also, the L line needs higher walls between the ROW and the 210 freeway. Too many times has a semi ended up on the tracks...
1 train every 20mins is what I would expect from a regional service train.
The nice thing about vancouver's skytrain is that it's fully automated, so it's not affected by manpower shortages
Agreed, I live in Markham and my local bus route is so infrequent I would rather drive to the GO station near me than have to plan and wait for the bus, despite it being a free transfer from YRT to GO now. And it sucks that my local bus route doesn't even operate on weekends, wtf! I would have to walk 30 min to the train station if I didn't have a car!
Canada also needs to improve its bus stop infrastructure. For a country that can get some ugly winter weather, there is definitely not enough shelter for people waiting for infrequent bus service. Unfortunately, I do see a lot of homeless people occupying bus stops with shelters in downtown Toronto. Not sure what can be done about it.
The "transit is for commute only" mentality exists in Europe as well, I live in countryside and we only two buses in the morning and two more in the afternoon. This is not even in the closest village-with-a-shop, but you have to go to the village-on-state-road. You used to be able to live without a car here as late as the 80's, but after communism got removed everything associated with it became disliked, including a few good things including the bus transit that ran through basically all villages.
The cities need to provide more homeless shelters and it needs to be made harder to even become homeless by the government.
To be fair Toronto compared to some other parts of the country is actually pretty good for bus shelters I find
You might want to try tweeting or writing to YRT about this. I tweeted to them about a lack of bus shelter and how I had to wait for the infrequent bus in the cold, and YRT built a bus shelter at my stop just 3 months later. I was shocked that that's all it took.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
YRT should be renamed and spelled backward. - “TRY”
problem with YRT/Viva is the the double fare you have to pay when connecting to the TTC. That makes it the same cost as GO transit, so people just drive to the GO/TTC station.
With GO's 15 minute trains, I can see more people at least trying public transport as catching the train won't be a worry.
What will help YRT/Viva is a Co- Fare or a free transfer with the TTC (fare integration).
Thank you for making this video. I live in York Region, just north of Toronto, and the VIVA purple bus has such low frequency that it's almost unusable at this point. If you miss the connecting VIVA bus when you get off another train or bus, you could end up waiting up to 40 minutes (!) in some cases on the weekend. Then there's the issue of slow travel times, the bus does not get signal priority at intersections which makes the ride longer than it should even though it has its own designated bus lane. There's also 'pinch point's' along the corridor, like by HWY 404, where the bus lane is just one lane and you often have to wait for a light to change. All these issues could be easily improved tomorrow (except for widening the lanes at certain points), but there doesn't seem to be any will power to do that.
Ya there will be a pinch point at Brock and Dundas in Whitby with the new Durham BRT. It was going to be a widened sidewalk and two bus lanes as a transit park, but then there was push back so now its 2 car lanes and a single bus lane.
Not giving signal priority is so stupid. Particularly when frequency is so low it would handpy effect cars.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 I use to live in Durham Region. My idea to get around the pinch point at Dundas and Brock would be tunnel under from Garden St. to Cochrane, or elevate the road along Colborne St. I know some may balk at the idea of an elevated road along Colborne, but it can be made relatively obscure if the guideway is thin and much of Colborne is parking lots and little residential. Ultimately a sky train style rail line would be best for HWY 2 in Durham and HWY 7 in York Region IMO.
@@carlinthomas9482 Ultimate a sky train would be best, but I don't think thats reasonable (or needed) for decades.
I do think tunneling/raised roadway would be an unnecessarily expensive solution. Just ban cars going through Dundas and make it a Bus only route (with some commercial exceptions and emergency etc). Anyone trying to go to Toronto can Garden to the 401, Dunlop and Mary can carry local traffic, and Burns can be used as well. Like I personally drive through that intersection daily, and it would be no inconvenience to change this. It would be a huge improvement in tranist and create a much more walkable area. I would also cut up Colborne to cut out through traffic to expand that walkable area.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 Yes, that would also work. They had to cancel that plan as a bus only thoroughfare due to NIMBYISM, I recall seeing people with signs on their front lawns that were against that idea. Whitby is one of the most NIMBY municipalities in the GTA.
The single lane isn’t a huge issue imo, the poor frequency is!
Yes!! Toronto’s UPExpress to the airport has become unusable since they scaled the service down to every 30 minutes. The wait can now be longer than the ride!
it's back to 15 min frequencies now isn't it?
192 loyalists unite (now 900)
@@stefslon I took it 2 weeks ago and can confirm it was only every 30 mins. Terrible.
@@stefslon nope! They tried, but then ran out of underpaid staff.
I don’t necessarily think I would say it’s unusable, but it certainly is more annoying than it should be! Ultimately though it’s still faster than driving a lot of the time
Awesome quote Reece! "You can't judge the number of people who want a bridge by the number who swim."!
I live in the Yonge-Eglinton/Yonge Lawrence area on Yonge Street. When I moved here the Yonge bus would run about every 10 minutes. Now it's so variable - I'm regularly seeing 45min wait times, then two busses bunched back to back,, then 50minutes. Yes, we have subway stations - but it's a 30-45 min walk between them - with lots of shops in-between. I've stopped taking the bus - even when carrying heavy groceries or kitty litter.
Amen! Preach it, brother! When my local transit agency touts nonsense like wifi, I always roll my eyes. I don't care about that. I want frequency! It sucks when you spend more time *waiting* for the bus than riding the damned thing. Frequency, all day service, coverage, and reliability are what matter. Service, service, service! Sometimes it feels like they want to focus on everything but the service. It's infuriating.
I definitely agree with you here, and it's a shame that systems in the US build these cathedrals for their networks, but then run 2 [vehicles] an hour. Why spend all of that money upfront when you can save it for operations and possibly recoup much of it from fares due to high ridership.
Ultimately, this is an issue (at least in the US) of accounting, as capital budgets are easier to exploit for political gain, but operations/maintenance budgets are usually harder to get more money for and are typically the first thing cut by the municipality when budget shortfalls occur.
And part of it is that its easy to reduce the number of vehicles by 1, its a lot harder to reduce the price of your fixed cathedral for transit.
And i definitely agree, make the transit buildings scaled for desired capacity and then actually run the vehicles at a viable frequency. (2 vehicles per day is not viable transit for anyone)
The bus service in my city in the UK is so bad that it's almost always faster for me to walk to the central bus station rather than get the bus from the stop directly outside my house. Buses are supposed to run every 10 minutes, but at least half of them get randomly cancelled and the rest are so consistently late it would be easier for them to accidentally run on time once in a while. The worst part is I pay for a day ticket on my phone so I can get a bus to the bus station and then another bus from there, only to have to walk most of the way to the bus station because waiting any longer at my local bus stop would make me late, and then watch the bus I paid to be on drive past me as I'm walking there. How such a densely populated place as the UK can have such appalling public transport is a mystery.
I live and NI and using our bus system is like playing roulette. Sometimes the bus is early, sometime it's late and sometimes it doesn't even arrive
Seattle should double its frequency between North Seattle and downtown once the second line opens next year interlined with the first line. It'll be exciting to see the effect that has on ridership
I would love to see it! I was glad to see that the lightrail frequencies have improved since last year (when they were still in pandemic mode).
Yes! When London, Ontario was looking into a BRT system in 2018 (half of which ended up getting approved), there was this refrain from opponents of the (ultimately cancelled) North leg that it would only save a few minutes’ trip time compared to existing buses servicing the route. Sure, a few minutes ON THE BUS. But the BRT was proposed to have 5-minute headways, when the existing buses on that corridor come sometimes every 15 minutes, sometimes every 30 minutes. So just by frequency, that’s a savings of up to 25 minutes for a one-way trip.
Londoners in the north and west very much dislike anything associated with the poors. The joke's on them, east London finally gets some much-needed investment.
I remember travelling to visit my aunt in Ottawa (well, really, a Gatineau suburb) and being astonished that the nearest bus involved a nearly 1km walk and passes once every hour. If I miss the bus, I have to wait an hour for the next!
As a side note, I re-started taking buses here in Bogota because they developed an app which shows you where your bus is coming. The system has been unable to deal with the awful transit of the city, and routes can get stuck for a while, but the frequency is decent, so at least I'm able to see if I'll only have to wait 10 minutes, or if it's 45min away and I better take a taxi. I had abandoned the system before, because of unreliable waiting times, and only used the BRT system which is far more reliable in that sense.
We visited Montreal a month ago. We relied completely on transit, and didn't bother to look at schedules. The metro trains ran at good frequencies even on the weekend. Even the buses were frequent enough that we could just go to a stop and wait for the next bus.
I would not say the Montreal buses are reliably frequent. Some routes are, and Montréal does a good job of advertising it's 10 min max network on stops and maps, but the vast majority of bus routes in Montréal are of the every ~30 minutes variety non-clockface.
There's a long delayed redesign of the bus system that may tackle this, eliminating some routes to make the others higher frequency.
What you say about frequencies is so true. I live in Rennes and since today we are the smallest town in the world to have two metro lines. Lots of people could say it is overkilled but it is not.
We are a town of "only" 200000 and our transit system is a great success.
Why ? Because we have great frequencies. Less than two minutes between two subways at peak time !
Our first subway line doesn't have wifi, climate control, fancy onboard train screens, but only a mobile data connection since a few years. People do not really care that much about it because anyway they will not wait nor spend a long time in it.
Rennes, even if not perfect has understood all the basics
they've just appointed a "weekend service czar" for the MTA here in nyc to look at the huge issue with lack of frequency on the weekends, especially with how demand has shifted in the city with the pandemic
Very good video Reece!!!
I once missed my bus that only runs once an hour, because my light rail was 10 minutes late due to a faulty traffic light. And then I had to wait in a cold space and freeze for 45 minutes until the next bus showed up. Additionally, I fully agree that people won't know that transit exists if it runs so infrequent.
Living in Australia, our trains and buses are rarely frequent. Few bus/train lines have under 10 mins headway. However, we're more inclined to use the services compared to what I heard about North Americans. People who rely on public transit here will plan their days around the schedule and we get used to it.
I don't know what city you could be referring to, but one big issue I had in Sydney and Brisbane (the latter in particular) was buses showing up late or never showing up at all. I think the issue here is not about individual users adapting their habits, but reversing that instead so that frequency and scheduling are adapted to people's needs (reliable, on time transport).
DLR in London is introducing a new timetable this month to use shorter trains (2 cars instead of 3) to increase the frequency on most branch lines to 18tph instead of 12tph.
Toronto's TTC isn't that bad in frequency compared to the suburban transit networks surrounding it. And there's a lot of redundancy of common alignment of overlapping bus routes that if you need to go only a few kilometres, you don't have to wait on a specific route to get around.
Well yeah obviously because its Toronto, financial capital and largest city in the country. Having better transit than a suburb like Mississauga or Markham isn't exactly a high standard.
I live in a suburb in San Diego County and you nailed it right on the head. The bus route next to my apartment stops every hour, MAYBE every half hour for a few hours during morning and evening rush hour, but that's it. Having to plan your journey and errands around an hourly bus is absolutely a killer for transit. I would use it if the schedule was convenient but since it is not my only reasonable day to day choice is to drive at the moment (at least until I get an eBike one day).
"You can't judge the amount of people who want a bridge based on the amount who swim" is so good, I'll be using that
One thing that annoys me where I live is that there is only one bus line that goes past my neighborhood every 20-30 minutes, and sometimes it comes and leaves a few minutes early, meaning I have to show up early just in case, and usually have to wait for a while. I ride my bike when I can, but that isn't possible during winter.
If I had a dollar for each time I had to wait 30mins for a connection to change trains on a Friday night here in Melbourne I'd be able to pay for an Uber home instead. Poor frequency is especially inconvenient when changing between services, especially if the timing means you just miss one train/bus/tram.
this isn't solely a US problem - my local train line in suburban London just had its services cut from 4tph to 2tph and shockingly I am finding myself having to drive more because it's just not convenient if I *need* to get somewhere on time
So true!
I hobbled on foot about a kilometre to the Emergency Room while suffering from a problem (thankfully now fixed) because the bus was nowhere to be seen when I needed it.
But even in less extreme cases when I have the luxury of waiting around, I've watched three Harbour Hoppers (a local amphibious tourist vehicle) pass by while waiting for one my city's most-used routes.
Thanks for making this video. I live in LA and mass transit comes every 8-15 minutes at best. It's so frustrating to watch 500 cars go by in that amount of time. As a society we are individually spending SO much money on transportation largely because public transit is so infrequent.
7:27 LOL
Fantastic video, hits home with the frequency issue. In the city I live in Australia, trains are every half hour most of the time. Buses can vary with 15 minutes at Peak Hour for some routes, but they're generally worse in the weekends where it's mostly half hour to an hour in certain areas. As someone that has to rely on PT, it really annoys me and I have to fill up the time of waiting for the next bus.
When I went to Melbourne for a trip, I was shocked at how reliable the trains and trams were. Very frequent in the City Loop and the Trams most of the time were no more than 10 minutes.
Thanks so much! The weird off peak service on local transit in Aus is problematic! Rail is great though!
'You can't judge the demand for a bridge by how many will swim' - very good!
The more i watch these kinds of videos the more i realise how lucky i am here in Istanbul. Here, every metro line has service every 4-6 minutes. The Marmaray always runs trains every 7.5 minutes. The Metrobüs brt runs busses every 2 minutes! And even the usual busses run pretty frequently, anywhere from 5 minutes to 20 minutes.
When I went to uni in a large-ish country town/small city (about 40,000 people), the only bus that served the campus came about every hour. It was exactly frequent enough to not give you adequate time in the town centre to get done everything you needed to before the next one came, while simultaneously being exactly infrequent enough that missing it and having to wait for the next one was a real pain in the ass.
In Sydney we have very frequent trains and buses. Only some buses aren’t to frequent and even so i can walk to another bus stop not far and only have to wait 5 minutes
Not on weekends I'm afraid. If you're doing a short journey like North Sydney-Central that's probably true. Any longer trip and you're looking at 15-20 minutes' wait, sometimes even 30.
This is so spot on Reece thanks so much for making this video! Looking at the hard infrastructure and bus shelter between the TTC vs York Transit (VIVA), its evident high frequency is what drives ridership. Not to mention if any transfers are required, low frequency is a ridership killer.
The next train arrivies before you have left the platform during rush hour in Stockholms metro. Seeing your videos makes me appriciate the transit we have here.
Lucky you mate😂. I'm jealous
I live in Baltimore and this is super on point. Here the problem is the state runs the transit - it's Maryland Transit Authority - so the design is entirely aesthetic, have coverage so you can say you provide transit and then have 30-40 min headways peak with huge delays and busses that don't even show up.
I have what they would call a "high frequency" line, the purple line, outside my door. It has 15-20 min headways but unless I'm going somewhere on it's exact route it makes little sense to take because any transfer takes trip times to over an hour, esp returning. It also doesn't help taking the bus two ways costs a $4 day pass, which is a lot compared to maybe a dollar in gas driving myself.
Also with it's frequent stops I get almost anywhere in half the time with my car (and it's only BRT downtown, everywhere else it gets stuck in the same traffic) and everywhere has free parking outside the downtown proper.
It's gonna take so much political will to fix it it's insane. Getting rid of the free street parking everywhere would get such huge backlash. They just cut light rail headways because the MTA claims they don't have enough train drivers.
This is such a great and important video! I grew up in Russia in a small (in Russian terms) city - we had very old, often breaking buses and trams, but there was a lot of them and I always knew that one way or another I will be able to get home. Then I moved to Moscow, where you almost never (unless it's a deep night) have to wait for a bus, a tram or a train longer than a couple of minutes. And then we moved to Ottawa. In the first years we honestly tried to use public transport, but then we moved to a relatively dense neighborhood, near two very busy streets with buses that use a lot of people. And well, when buses come only every 30 minutes and sometimes don't come at all, it becomes very challenging to rely on public transport. We had to buy a car at the end :( I hope it will become better in the future - it seems it's getting on the nerves of more and more people nowadays.
Ottawa is known for having a pretty bad transit system. It usually Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and to a lesser extent Calgary and Edmonton that have actual transit systems.
Because it's the Capital of Canada, there are a lot of rich, car-owning politicians in Ottawa who feel like investing in a good transit system is bad because "they have a car so everyone else can just get one instead", not realizing that there are many benefits to good transit.
As a frequent TTC and YRT rider the infrequent schedule is what REALLY bugs me. It would take double or even triple the time that would take me to drive to go from my home to anywhere. Most of the time are wasted on waiting for the bus because you just missed one and it's another 30 minutes until the next one comes, and sometimes you have to wait for multiple transfers just to go to your destination, which also adds up the wasted time. It feels like you're completely at the mercy of the bus schedule, and this is one of the reason why so many people would rather drive than take the transit.
Yes! I once read an argument about frequency on Skyscraper Page in the context of York Region. Higher frequencies, they argued, would slow down transit because it increases ridership, and we can't have that!
Also, VIVA should run service on Steeles Ave because it's so high ridership. Hmmmm ...
Agreed! It does depend a little on where you are when you are waiting. Shelters with seats are essential and a countdown system can give a degree of confidence that a vehicle is on its way. A coffee shop/newsagent would be a good extra. Trams and trolleybuses are good as the overhead wires and rails advertise the existence of transit and are reassuring.
Agreed! NYC train lines with more frequency ALWAYS have more riders and they’re always more enjoyable and useful to ride. (Example: Any of the Lex Av/ 7av lines, the 7 train post CBTC, the L train post CBTC, the E train)
Living in Denver and recovering from a knee injury, I almost never use the public transit since the stress of long walks and waits for services is not worth the money. I can't imagine what the recent disruptions to the A Line has done to ridership.
In Milan we have a subway train every 1.5 mins during rush hours and every 3 mins outside the rush hours.
And we have busses and trams every 3 mins during rush hours and every 4/5 mins outside rush hours.
100% agree!
Probably the most stupid idea is to plan new bus lines and then let them go at a frequency of once every 2 hours to check "demand".... no, if the bus almost never comes, I wont take it, haha... especially if its a "taxi-bus" which you need to call in advance.
Also, people vastly underestimate network effects of bus lines. More lines + more frequency on this lines makes also the existing lines way more attractive.
I agree with you in reference to inner city metro lines(I live in London currently) but disagree with regards to regional rail. I grew up in the NW suburbs of Chicago and the METRA frequency did not bother me as there was a set schedule with great on-time performnce so I would show up at the station at the appropriate time and catch the train this was prerty standard for most riders(in my experience).
Agreed, especially with the caveat that, when frequency is lower, punctuality needs to be excellent. I can live with having to look at a clock to know when to get to the bus stop, I do not like when said bus is not on time, or worse, cancelled. Even worse, when scheduled connections are lost because of lateness of my first ride, and you're halfway and can't even opt to go back home and take a car or bike in stead.
I don’t know! Metra doesn’t really provide all day service on most lines so if you wanna come home in the middle of the day or late at night, you don’t always have that option
@@RMTransit Metra isn't too bad, though Covid did throw a wrench in the schedule. Most lines run a train once an hour with decent predictability, and last trains out of Chicago can be 11 pm - 12 am, which isn't entirely unreasonable. I pretty comfortably (reverse) commuted on Metra for years, and the bigger issue for me was always friends living in the suburbs, not train frequencies.
Me going to my high school is the story I always love to tell for this: the journey from my house to my high school was roughly 4 km. However, due to the lack of connections between Montreal and Laval, the only bus option I had at the time, lest I take a colossal detour to take the metro, was a bus that passed once every hour. The frequency on the route was so ridiculous that if, after school, I missed my bus, it was literally quicker to return home BY FOOT than to wait for the next bus.
I'm sorry, but if your frequency is so awful that, if your timing is unlucky, walking is literally quicker than taking the bus, you know your transit route sucks.
Hell even recently I had to go to Laval to meet a friend and once again I faced the nonsensical notion that walking to my destination was almost as quick as taking the bus there, and if you were willing to go on busy boulevards via bicycle (I'm not), then cycling to my destination was literally 3 times quicker than taking the bus, it was even quicker than taking the car
Seattle shoutout! The Link does waaaay better than some of the bus routes. The _one_ bus that I can walk to from where I live runs every 20 for "rush hour" morning and afternoon, every 30 outside of those times, and *hourly* on weekends and super early/late. I refer to it as "the least reliable line in the network"... because it really is.
Reese's comment about trips of a few km being almost worthless on infrequent transit absolutely applies. If there were even just 15-minute buses on that line, I'd take it all the time. I could do my grocery shopping and not have to sit on the side of the road while my ice cream melts. I could easily get to buses with _real_ frequency (~5 min) without having to drive the couple miles to the P&R. Or I could reliably get to the Link rail without having to wait around forever.
I am from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, and my city's experience matches 100% what you described in the video. The city's tram and trolleybus systems were in slow but steady decay since late 1980s till mid-2010s. They were becoming slower with ever falling frequency, hence low ridership and further decay. When the city council finally realised that transit needed investment, they had no money for brand-new fleet or fixing all the 90 km of gauge. So they bought 13 used trams and 30 used trolleybuses from the Czech Republic. The ridership skyrocketed, the demand for public transport grew, and in several years more money was interested in infrastructure upgrades and buying new fleet.
This is exactly my problem with bus transit in Kuala Lumpur. Frequency. So much of it is incredibly infrequent, up to 45 min, even during peak hours and its so uncoordinated that I have *barely* missed a connecting bus that I would then have to wait another 20-30 minutes for. It’s led to a bus system that’s grossly underused and a rail system that could be better utilised by those living just beyond walking distance
The YRT/VIVA has such potential to be a great service and yet it's run by people who do not care about it at all. How I've managed to live here without a car for this long is beyond me
Edit: I'll say the Blue is at least pretty reliable most of the time and the rapidway does slap. Wish the Orange and Purple ran frequently too but here we are
Been watching your channel for a long time. Love how it has evolved... Great camera setup and your monologue was very well said. Keep up the good work!
I live on a block with two different bus routes in Denver. One is an east - west that is hourly and the North-South is also hourly. I've never bothered to use them because I can't wait that long!
What do we want?
-- More frequency!
When do we want it?
-- All the time!
Now! And five minutes from now! And another five minutes from then!
And in the US, the only response you are most likely to get will be from the big automakers saying "Just shut up and drive".
Thanks for another amazing video! Although it would likely be totally impractical, if the transit vehicle manufacturers had a short term lease program, they could do a pilot project that, along with a proper ad campaign, would demonstrate that the cost of extra trains would be made back in increased ridership. Unfortunately, without standardized measurements for trains, rails, etc. my guess is that this would be a non-starter.
In the 1970s I lived in Toronto on Finch Ave near Seneca College. One month, as an experiment I measured how long I had to wait for a bus to downtown. The average for a month was 14 seconds! Finch was 6 lanes wide but when I observed the traffic and tried to count the number of people travelling along the street: over 60% were on buses. This was after the Yonge subway was extended to Finch, but before the Sheppard subway was built.
So true! Here in Vienna, "my" S-Bahn line, S45, is basically like an additional U-Bahn line (except that it's operated by ÖBB instead of Wiener Linien). It was fairly popular, but not extremely popular when it ran at a 15 minutes interval as was the case years ago. Then they introduced a 10 minute frequency at peak times, and eventually a 10 minutes interval throughout the day. Then they included it on the U-Bahn map. At each step, the trains, even though more frequent, got MORE crowded because more people would ride them (and you did not have to plan ahead anymore). The only reason they did not reduce it further down to 5 minutes is that at one end the last bit is single track and 10 minutes is therefore the minimum they can do.
You nailed it! Frequency is king.
I'm going to dissent slightly. A lot of transit advocacy in North America focuses too much on the carrots of transit, high frequency, comfortable rides, good connections, TOD, etc. but not the sticks. In most countries and cities with high levels of transit use, driving is more expensive and onerous than it is in the United States and Canada. Gas is more expensive, parking more limited, and even then you still get people that just want to drive everywhere. It does cause more people to consider transit though. You can't just offer less service. Even the best transit is going to struggle against car ownership all things being equal. There is a stick element.
We don't use the stick in North America because (especially in the US) it would literally lead to civil unrest. Cheap gas and free parking is in the Constitution, don'cha know?
You are so right about this! - and parti cularly about the disincentive to use infrequent transit when you have to make a change. Here in the UK, the London tube was getting this right - a clear map of services + good wayfinding signs + FREQUENT services on all lines, gave Londoners (or, at least, those within a walk of a tube station) a vast range of journey opportunities, and people did - and do - use them. I can't believe that this simple lesson has been ignored by other (UK) rail operators for so long!...
thank god you made this video. only recently i was dooming about this, nearly everyday i take the ttc 129a line from finch to markham highway 7, not only i have to pay double fares for the ride since its 2 different cities but it only arrives every 40 minutes or so, all the time being super packed. I have to arrive 40 mins early to my work everytime also incase the bus is too late or too early, like it always is. just frequency for every 20 minutes, which i still feel like its weird would do wonders. not to mention having to deal with that and then seeing subways that are not even as packed (still is at times) getting even higher frequency while theres so much worse to fix leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
This is exactly what DLR in London is planning. Of course the cynic in me says that had they thought of doing that previously, then expensive platform extensions to cope with 3 car trains need not have been spent. One problem though is the need to recruit more train captains, not just because of the cost of that, but the inability to recruit transport staff is a big problem all over UK these days.
I'll be honest what throws me off UK public transport isn't just the frequency. It's the fact that my car is so much more reliable, I can guarantee I'll be on time and if there's a jam I can avoid it so long I use Google maps or Waze. Not only that but generally it's cheaper (Exponentially so if I have a passenger. Or 5) and has a boot to carry my shopping. For anything that isnt going to the pub (Where it'd be illegal to drive home) or going into a city where cars are demonized, my car is just leaps and bounds better in every way.
In New York City, I've been to the "American Museum of Natural History". Used the subway to get to and from the museum. Had to wait for a train 10 minutes, during the day time, because I did not run down the stairs to the platform in time. 10 minutes on the New York Subway compared to 5 or less minutes on the Toronto Subway to get to the Royal Ontario Museum.
Hopefully, travelling to the Science Centre Station on Line 5 will be similar to the Toronto Subway. Except there is an asphalt desert (AKA parking lot) we would have to safari across from the station the Science Centre entrance, but that's another story.
I like "safari"! Tasty word choice.
New York does operate at lower frequencies than it often should
Flip side: the sheer delight when you rock up to the station and by sheer coincidence your half hourly train is just about to arrive.
Melbourne Australia here, at 8:30pm trains are typically 30 minutes for most line, trams 20 minutes that typically radiates about 10km or so from the CBD and with many overlaps. And with buses good luck finding one if they haven't finished already...
High frequency in Singapore is decent with frequencies in peak periods at 100 seconds between trains on the core MRT lines. When the Thomson East Coast Line opens it's next phase, hopefully it can run trains with very high frequencies, better than when it opened it's first phase, which the frequencies were between 10 to 15 minutes, or now with 5 to 9 minutes which is still not too bad. Even our buses can run at less than 10 minutes too.
Speaking about phased opening of new lines, I wonder if you have any thoughts on this approach, like its advantages and disadvantages?
That’s an interesting idea for sure!
Definitely would use the LA bus system more if it was frequent at all. I’ve had to resort to Uber because the bus that would be convenient for me runs once every 80 minutes
As a person who rides BART sometimes and loves transit, it’s nice that they finally changed the schedule.
wait it's not every 30 minutes anymore?
The irony of the VIVA Orange BRT is that Brampton Transit runs a more frequent bus service over its same corridor
As someone who uses Denver’s RTD Light Rail daily, I am baffled by the infrequency of the train I have to take. Certain trains only go to twice an hour at 7pm! And this is the train to Denver International Airport.
There are hidden reasons transit has bad frequency though...speed and cost. Speed is a simple concept. The faster the bus/train the sooner it can do its route again = faster frequency. What affects speed? Critically, grade separation. Is it a coincidence that a 10 mph bus or a light rail stuck crawling with traffic has poor frequency, while often grade separated rail does not? I suspect if Denver/Seattle had true grade separated rail, their frequency would be better. Then there is cost. Drivers are incredibly expensive as are transit vehicles. Transit A that has 3x the speed of Transit B, will all else being equal, have a third of the cost, because speed = capacity = cost savings. You don't need 3 time the number of buses to equal one rapids transit train.
I don’t know I hate to always bring it back here but Toronto operates plenty of slow services frequently so I don’t really think it’s an either or
Inneresting ...
Eyy, cool to see YRT and the Viva bus in the thumbnail. I moved to the York region during the pandemic, and I was super excited that there was a bus stop 30 seconds outside my place. Little did I know it runs every 30 minutes, and rarely is it ever on time.
The infrequency is made even worse since the bus lines move either north-south or east-west. Since the whole region is basically a grid, if I want to travel south east, that’s two buses and two times I have to wait. The shortest I’ve waited for a transfer was 10 minutes, longest was 25.
There’s lots of construction on Major Mackenzie for the past couple years, trying to build more stations. But if I have to waste upwards of 40-50 minutes round trip just because the transfers are impossible to time, I’m just gonna drive. I’ll be miserable in traffic, but at least I’m not both miserable and wasting time.
I recently moved to a city with a 10 minute lrt and the difference between being able to get somewhere by transit if you plan ahead and being able to show up to the platform at any time expecting to being able to find a train in a few minutes is immense
LA has an operator problem, but the frequency is still killer. It’s crazy knowing that tunnel has a possibility for headeays of 5 minutes a train.
Here in Germany buses and trains usually run every 10-ish minutes or more after 6 pm as well but people kinda plan their commuting around that. I think North American cities have to make an extra mile in that case. Imagine living in the mid of suburbia and have a ten minute walk after waiting for the bus or the train for half an hour. That would push everybody right into the car. Imo TOD is a pretty big issue in North America but you're right, frequency is the final killer for all public transit efforts.
I think you mean "here in Berlin or here in Munich" not Germany as a whole.
I don't know what part of Germany you are talking about. Here in cologne the Stadtbahn operates T10/T5 depending on the demand in the line during normal and peak operation, and drops to T15 and T30 the later it gets during the night... Most buses here are T10 as well however, so generally frequency is good, especially when paired with the fact that you can reach nearly everywhere in the city with only 1 transfer
@@MTobias I've been to places like Hamburg, Bremen, Hannover, Würzburg, Berlin and Frankfurt etc and it was always the same.
Yes I think zoning is a bigger issue than frequency, but TOD is a little outside what North American consider a transit responsibility
The frequency of regular regional trains (not counting express trains) in Germany is typically two, one or half a train every hour (though the latter is something I have yet to exerience). High service (headway of four and six trains per hour on a single line) is S-Bahn frequency and thus only true for big cities.
10 minute frequency of buses is more realistic but only within cities of a reasonable size or lack of trams. In fact, the next city to where I live doesn't run buses even bundled at this frequency outside of hubs so at most, there is a headway of 15 minutes with them, never lower (granted, it has trams which justifies the lack of 6 buses per hour frequency).
Really good point. Recently Kingston Transit over in the east a bit has slashed their frequency due to staffing shortages, and I find since then it’s genuinely been a bit since I’ve used a bus because… it’s never worth it anymore. I end up spending more money on expensive Uber trips or cabs to get where I need to go because the busses I use (I live downtown) come every hour instead of half hour or 15 minutes. It’s putting less money in their system because im paying more to not use their service.
As a Denver resident (and frequent rider of the 15!), I really appreciate your commentary on our transit system. We definitely have the framework for a highly effective system, but until RTD figures out its staffing problems and increases reliability/frequency, it will always be underutilized. Thanks!
But Viva Blue is decent...
:(
Yeah, he always hates on viva. Meanwhile Viva blue runs every 7-15 min during peak times.
Viva blue does alright, VIVA purple has horrendous waiting times. It needs to run more than just 22 and 40 minutes in some cases. Frequency should be doubled, at a minimum, on that line.
problem with YRT/Viva is the the double fare you have to pay when connecting to the TTC. That makes it the same cost as GO transit, so people just drive to the GO/TTC station.
With GO's 15 minute trains, I can see more people at least trying public transport as catching the train won't be a worry.
What will help YRT/Viva is a Co- Fare or a free transfer with the TTC (fare integration).
@@MatthewHoHiWorld but it doesn’t run 24 hours! And 7-15 is worse than the Steeles or Finch buses which have no massive BRT infra!
@@RMTransit The 99/98 runs throughout most of the night (even though the headways like like, every 75m...)
I live in Bhubaneswar India.
The brt system we have is "mobus" and it's frequency is so low that I'm back to using Uber even if it costs more and I genuinely want to use bus service........
To drive ridership you need to make transit convenient!
Frequency is that piece. Make it more attractive than me getting in the car.
My daily commute could be done by transit, but I don't because the timing doesn't work well for me. I'd have to leave home 20mins earlier, and if I miss the train that comes 5mins after my finish time I'm then waiting 30mins for the next. If I'm a little too late for that it's 1hr for the next.
Look at flights on the golden triangle (Sydney/Brisbane/Melbourne) - you could put large planes on these flights and move the same number of people, but the airlines don't - they fly 180 seaters more frequently, because that's what their passengers want.
Love the topic. Anchorage recently added frequency to our system, huge help.
You wave your hands A Lot!
The city i live in has some good examples:
- a bridge that tram tracks run on is being rebuilt, so the tram (30m) was replaced by 24m busses, the frequency was doubled (the tram ran 15 minutes, now the bus runs every 6-8 minutes and at peak hours even more often) and it’s wonderous how much more convenient it is to take the bus.
- the most frequent route is a trolleybus route, despite all things it has been and still is the most frequent route in the city, with intervals of every 3 minutes in peak hours and every 5 minutes in weekend peak hours. This is only one route, but that route is infamous for being full and packed with people
We have a lot of issues to iron out, like us not having enough drivers to service the buses (nationwide), and the route network needs rework too as there’s too many routes that go every hour. The system needs large optimizations but it shows that if there’s frequency it can run really well and even necessite further service improvements!
The comment that said “if you have to plan your leave times, then the system sucks” was a really great one, hits the point home well
I had a "conversation" with someone on twitter today, who claimed he KNEW public transit could NEVER work in the US because he lived in a city with one of the TOP TEN bus systems in the US, and then, without missing a beat said "you just can't plan around a bus that runs once an hour."
(Meanwhile, I, a person who grew up in a tiny 16,000 person suburban town in Europe, can remember my back street having a every 20 minute bus that connected my town to the nearest town to the east, and west, and to the town train station where it synced up with the train leaving to the nearest city (total front door-city centre time about 35 minutes). So my little german village had better public transit than one of the "TOP TEN" cities in America.
Preach. My neighborhood gets hourly buses. Even 15 minutes between buses would make it so much more usable.
I'd argue that transit priority and designated lanes are essential to make frequent transit possible. The biggest expenditure that transit agencies have outside the capital costs are labor. Quite simply, if you have faster buses, you can use less operators and buses to achieve more frequency. It doesn't need to be fancy like York, but transit agencies aren't going to throw more drivers out there, mostly because many don't have enough for the meager service. What might solve this is finding the most used segments of certain bus lines and splitting them. TriMet did this with the line 4, which then became the line 2 and 4, now the 2 is FX2, a "BRT"(not really, it's more akin to rapidride in Seattle) that at the moment runs every 12 minutes and likely better if they could get the operator headcount up as attrition is high. Jarrett Walker constantly goes on about prioritizing frequency over coverage ad nauseum, but it's worth a look at because we should be using the operators we have for frequent service and once we've achieved that, then the rest can go to coverage, but that might cause political issues.