HomeDiagramsDatabaseMapsForum About
     

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > Transportation


Reply

 
Thread Tools Display Modes
     
     
  #1  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 12:32 AM
llamaorama llamaorama is offline
Unicorn Wizard!
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 4,204
idea: reverse commuters and inverting the focus of transit routes

This is something I've been thinking about for a while.

Basically, most transit systems have a hub and spoke topology with downtown as the focus. This works in the largest cities with the most transit ridership. However it feels a little off in smaller cities and also in sunbelt cities. This is because comparatively few people live and work downtown and the people who do are probably more likely to own a car.

On the other hand, we know that suburban transit ridership in the US is dismal. The transit agencies with successful reforms, like Houston's Metro, focused on urban routes and cut back on suburban ones.

However, I think what's missed is just how dispersed jobs and services have become. It's been a trend that's only grown stronger. CBD's and central cities are weaker than they've ever been when it comes to having things that aren't either high-end office space or destination dining/entertainment.

To me the solution is obvious but you never see it looking at transit maps. Why not have a network which inverts the hub and spoke? Instead of peak hour only routes and park and rides in the suburbs, and central hubs in the core, what about district circulators and limited stop routes to suburban employment and services hubs going to multiple parts of the city where the ridership originates?

For example, here in Fort Worth few people use Trinity Metro. It has daily ridership of something like 15,000 people a day. That's it. There is a a commuter bus getting federal funds. It runs from a parking lot on I-35 north next to a feeder road with nothing walkable to it, with only a few hundred parking spaces. That's it. It goes to a downtown that's not as prominent as it used to be. I don't think it will perform well.

What's interesting is across from the freeway in North Fort Worth, undeserved by transit, is the region's largest non-mall retail hub. Also a huge hospital. Several doctors offices, assisted living places, etc. A large office complex

When you think about it, few people from the relatively more affluent north FW suburbs like Keller are going to use a park and ride bus to go downtown. But there are a lot of people from poorer parts of Fort Worth with good existing bus service who work in service industry occupations and are employed out in that area.

What's funny is the proposed express bus actually does extend past downtown to a transit center on the east side, which is a traditionally black working class neighborhood that's seen better days. A lot of folks who live there ride the bus though. But what's pointless is running from the park and ride inbound does nothing because hardly anyone works in that area. Some of the people who live there would use the bus to get out to suburban jobs and doctor's appointments though. But they can't because there's no way to get across the freeway.

One solution would be some kind of rideshare system like the existing zip zone service. But it's inefficient to do a couple riders at a time like that.

My pitch: what about a service where the bus, after reaching the park and ride, circulates around to pick and drop people off closer to actual destinations?
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #2  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 12:55 AM
Busy Bee's Avatar
Busy Bee Busy Bee is offline
Show me the blueprints
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: on the artistic spectrum
Posts: 10,301
$.

Imagination.

Initiative.
__________________
Everything new is old again

There is no goodness in him, and his power to convince people otherwise is beyond understanding
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #3  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 4:05 AM
ardecila's Avatar
ardecila ardecila is offline
TL;DR
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: the city o'wind
Posts: 16,356
US suburbs are incredibly hard to serve with transit. The urban design is just not compatible; any kind of bus service faces huge tradeoffs.

You can run a fast bus on a suburban arterial street, but it's an extremely hostile place to wait for a bus, with fast traffic and limited or no sidewalks/crosswalks. The main street is usually far from the front doors of buildings, so people have to walk a long way through parking lots or ditches to reach a bus stop.

Or you can run a bus that goes into office parks and shopping centers where the people are, but this is horribly inefficient and slow to snake through parking lots and stoplights. People want a bus that comes to their own front door, but they (understandably) don't want to sit on a bus while it detours to serve other people.

The only real way out of this trap is to change the land use to favor denser, more pedestrian friendly patterns. Canadian suburbs have done this and they have strong bus ridership. But they also have limited freeway systems and they have restricted the growth of office districts outside of their downtowns.
__________________
la forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel...

Last edited by ardecila; Sep 16, 2022 at 4:16 AM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #4  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 4:17 AM
Doady's Avatar
Doady Doady is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 4,700
I struggle to understand your idea, llamaorama. Bus does one trip toward the station has to return backward to continue doing further trips towards the station, right? The buses are returning no matter what.

I think the key to high transit ridership is a system that is connected, and that means redundancy. Not only reducing the gap between bus routes, and also reducing the gaps between buses on a route (e.g. higher frequencies, 24-hour service). A rail line or a bus route that is isolated is not going to be useful. More connections are needed.

More connections means that isolating urban routes and disconnecting from them suburban corridors is not the solution. The division of city and suburb is the root of the problem of transit in the US to begin. Why does ridership in US so much worse than Canada? It's because of the lack of suburban transit. Compare Toronto city to Chicago city, difference in transit ridership is two times. But compare Toronto suburb to Chicago suburb, difference in transit ridership is ten times. Ten times difference vs. two times difference. Division and isolation not the key, the key is connection, and that means connecting suburbs as well.

Hub-spoke is good for connecting nodes, but there are also corridors, best served by grid system. Suburban systems need hub-and-spoke routes, but they also need grid routes. Hub-and-spoke system and grid system together, overlapping. More buses means more ridership.

But Trinity Metro has 146 buses? Am I reading this right? 146 buses serving a city with a population of over 900,000? Come on. A typical 15km long route with buses averaging 15km/h per hour for all-stop service and 20km/h for limited stop service, that means 24 buses for 5 minute all-stop service and 9 buses for 10 minute express service. That's 33 buses just to serve one corridor. You cannot build a comprehensive system to serve a city of 900,000 effectively with just 146 buses. A city of that size probably has 5 major east-west corridors, 5 major north-south corridors, that's already around 200 buses needed right there. And then you have to consider all the minor corridors which will require hundreds more buses.

Here in Mississauga, suburb in Toronto area, the MiWay bus system has 504 buses (392 MiLocal buses and 116 MiExpress buses), and the per weekday ridership is over 200,000 boardings. If Fort Worth wants to get 200,000 boardings per weekday, it will need at least 504 buses as well. 3 times the buses seems a small price to pay for 10 times the bus ridership.

But of course Fort Worth and its transit system doesn't exist in isolation. It wants to connect people, build a more connected system with more connected routes, but the willingness of the rest of the region to be more connected is important too. Does Arlington still have no transit? City of 400,000 with no transit is just mind-boggling to me. Mississauga has Toronto and Brampton as neighbours, two cities with big transit systems of their own. But Fort Worth has Arlington as its neighbour? Such a massive gap in the region's transit network, directly adjacent to Fort Worth, in the path toward Dallas, that's always going to severely limit of transit in Fort Worth. Fort Worth needs lots of buses and riders not only between destinations within Fort Worth, but also to/from Arlington, and from there to/from Dallas, and it can't do it alone. Again, isolation and division is the root of the problems with transit in the USA.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #5  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 3:26 PM
mhays mhays is offline
Never Dell
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Posts: 19,748
Some suburbs have better bus ridership. Not great but easily beating the city of Dallas for example.

Connecting lines are one factor. Another is sidewalks. And shelters. And the prevalence of buildings built in urban formats, like apartments and offices right on the street with underground parking and walkable retail. Fast bus lanes are another. And you have to have reasonable frequency.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #6  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 4:58 PM
jd3189 jd3189 is offline
An Optimistic Realist
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Location: Loma Linda, CA / West Palm Beach, FL
Posts: 5,571
I agree with ardecila in terms of building denser suburbs first. No matter how much infrastructure is built to supply mass transit in urban sprawl, it will never be desirable enough for people to use instead of a car and, thus, will never be profitable enough to not rely on government support.

As a nation, we have to rethink how we are going to grow our metro areas for the future.
__________________
Working towards making American cities walkable again!
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #7  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 5:08 PM
mrnyc mrnyc is offline
cle/west village/shaolin
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Posts: 11,586
the thing is, this has already been done and usa cities are not only well served, but overserved.

the problem is its by sprawl encouraging highways and not public transit options.

just look at a place like san antonio for example. they have what, like 3-4 outer loop highways? imagine if even one of those had been, or added, or ok lets be hopeful here and imagine they someday would add, a loop rail transit service with a few feeder connections.

bazinga, eh?

someone might want to encourage welfare state texas to use the fed money they take from payer states to build something besides roads.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #8  
Old Posted Sep 16, 2022, 8:55 PM
Doady's Avatar
Doady Doady is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 4,700
There are suburbs in the US that stand out such those of Atlanta and Charlotte, almost rural rather than suburban. Those kind of suburbs (if they can even be called suburbs) can never be served effectively by transit. But those are exceptions, Fort Worth and Dallas suburbs are very typical, not much different from rest of US, not much different from Canadian suburbs. Urban design not enough to explain why Dallas and Fort Worth has the worst transit ridership of the big four metropolitan areas in Texas, let alone one of the worst in the USA.

Of course, physical barriers are important to minimize. "Permeability" is an important feature of urban design, to reduce the walking distances, and "permeability" is important for reducing the distance between parallel transit routes and maximizing access to those routes.

But I think ultimately the main barriers to transit in US are political rather than physical. With the right policies, ridership of US systems would not be so different from Canadian systems. Physical environment of new Canadian neighbourhoods is very suburban and sprawling and car-oriented as well. Fort Worth (6 million riders in 2019) is a historic city and with real downtown core, much more potential for transit than a place like Laval (approx 30 million riders annually) or Brampton (approx. 40 million riders annually). Even looking elsewhere in US, you can see Las Vegas (66 million riders in 2019), almost a pure post-war city, but one of the leaders of transit ridership in the USA. Post-war sprawl is not as hostile to transit as you might think. The root of the problem is not sprawl, the problem is politics.

The ridership of Dallas Area Rapid Transit increased by a whopping 14% in 2019 after a massive increase in bus service. Success was due not to changing a bad urban environment but due to changing bad policies. Fix the policies first, then as the ridership increases, as demand for parking in downtown Fort Worth decreases, then it will become easier to change the urban environment.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #9  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2022, 1:46 PM
llamaorama llamaorama is offline
Unicorn Wizard!
 
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 4,204
To clarify, my suggestion is to run reverse commuter service. Nonstop express service from a location the urban part of the city. But when it gets to the burbs, it meanders around to hit important job and services points of interest.

This is the opposite of a typical suburban bus line that tries (and usually fails) to be a “collector” route in low density residential areas to bring those nonexistent riders to old fashioned 9 to 5 downtown jobs.

I want to get urban residents who are more likely to use transit to work and shopping and the doctor out in the suburbs because our cities have decentralized so much and that stuff isn’t downtown and isn’t coming back.

I made some horrible MS Paint drawings to illustrate my point:

Before:


After:

Last edited by llamaorama; Sep 17, 2022 at 2:16 PM.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #10  
Old Posted Sep 17, 2022, 11:17 PM
Doady's Avatar
Doady Doady is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Posts: 4,700
I am an idiot, I didn't mean to cause go through all that trouble of drawing examples, sorry about that.

There are routes like that here, direct non-stop along the freeway from subway station in the city to an office park, but they are funded by the employers, not by the city. Such a route is not sustainable normally, because problem is the buses get full, they don't pick up any more riders, no more revenue, despite the long destination. And of course, the agency needs to find a way to get the buses back to the subway station for further trips.

Normal transit system means non-express service, two-way service instead of one-way, all-day and not just rush hour only. The thing is, rapid transit measures such as limited stop or express service, especially rush hour only, are not a solution for low ridership, they are a solution for high ridership. When ridership is too high, the buses are too crowded, that's when you start looking at express/limited stop services to provide relief to those crowded buses.

A low ridership system like Trinity Metro should be looking at solutions for high ridership, it should be trying to solve the problem of low ridership first, which means building a basic transit system, laying the foundation for rapid transit, with normal local two-way bus routes. Speed is not going to be a problem for low ridership system like Trinity Metro because the buses and bus stops are empty. The buses don't have to stop to let anyone on or off so the buses are already fast. When people start using those buses and waiting at those stops, that when the buses will start to slow down, and that is when the system will need to start considering ways to speed those buses including limited stops, signal priority, all-door boarding, articulated buses.

With 16k riders per weekday, 5 million annually before COVID,Trinity Metro just not at that point yet. Glancing at the system map, I can see many gaps in Trinity Metro network that can be filled with more routes and 60 minute routes upgraded to 30 minutes. To worry about speed is just thinking way too far ahead, and that is the mistake being made all across the USA, spending so much on light rail and subway instead of normal bus service, and it hasn't gotten US systems anywhere, including DART with the largest light rail system in the US, and it won't get Fort Worth and its Trinity Metro anywhere either.

Best way to serve decentralized city is what I've already mentioned, the grid-based network. One north-south corridor and one east-west corridor can get anyone anywhere as long as parallel corridors are close enough, and frequencies high enough to make transfer from one bus route to an intersecting bus route easy. To focus instead on serving "Transfer Centres", resulting in all those broken and meandering routes and 60-minute frequencies, that's what holding transit in Fort Worth back. Trinity Metro needs to forget about hubs altogether, and just focus on serving corridors.

NYC MTA is not hub-and-spoke, it is grid-based. TTC is grid. Montreal STM is grid. These are the most successful systems, all grid-based. Of course, there are also commuter rail like Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North, GO, AMT, that are focused on serving hubs, but those systems are supplementary, providing some much needed relief to the much higher ridership main system. Again, to solve the problem of high ridership, not the problem of low ridership. The foundation for transit in these cities are really their grid-based systems. To serve corridors is main focus of those successful cities, and corridors should be the main focus of transit in Fort Worth as well.
Reply With Quote
     
     
  #11  
Old Posted Sep 18, 2022, 2:44 PM
Principality Principality is offline
BANNED
 
Join Date: Aug 2022
Posts: 94
Just extend the city limits so tax haven suburbs are unviable for office and residential. Sure, have that mcmansion. Enjoy the 4 hour commute.
Reply With Quote
     
     
End
 
 
Reply

Go Back   SkyscraperPage Forum > Discussion Forums > Transportation
Forum Jump


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 9:38 AM.

     
SkyscraperPage.com - Archive - Privacy Statement - Top

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.