Transit
Pocket schedules could make bus riding easier
Many bus riders take a single bus for most trips. In fact, many bus riders travel between the same two stops for many trips. A simple, printed, point to point schedule, listing the departure and arrival times for each of the two stops, could be a powerful tool for those riders.
Sample Westover pocket schedule.
One example of an area that could benefit from pocket schedules is the Arlington neighborhood of Westover. It's a mile east of the East Falls Church Metro and 1.8 miles west of Ballston. A group of neighborhood shops anchors the neighborhood, including the Lost Dog Pizza Deli, Lebanese Taverna and Ayers Variety Store, among others.
The #2 Metrobus runs directly through the center to both Metro stops. The majority of riders I've seen take the bus to Ballston and then transfer to Metrorail or stay in Ballston. Since almost all riders are going from one place to a single other place, they could benefit from a simple, easily accessible and usable pocket schedule.
Arlington Transportation Partners, which provides transportation information throughout the county, stocks schedules and maps in one of the local establishments. The #2 Metrobus schedules get snatched up immediately, while the other schedules and maps tend to languish
longer. However, almost all of the information in that schedule is extraneous to most of these users. All they really need to know is when the bus is going to Ballston and when it's returning.
If designed to be the size of a business card folded once, it would easily fit in a wallet. There's no need for a map or other destinations or really anything else. It would serve most of the people who might ride the bus to or from the Westover area. It's so easy, it might lure people who pick up one of these schedules at the ice cream shop to consider taking the bus.
There are certainly dozens of these nodes that directly connect two locations together and are highly used. Obvious ones include Shirlington-Pentagon and Shirlington-Ballston. Especially now that Arlington has built their nice, new Shirlington transit center, easy pocket schedules would be a great boon for users. There are several different routes that serve these points, so having a concise, combined schedule would simplify information and make it more accessible.
One of the big barriers to people riding the bus is they don't know when it comes and schedules can be hard to figure out sometimes. NextBus is one tool to help with that, but it doesn't tell me when I can get back. It also doesn't help me with, say, tomorrow. The WMATA web site can, but a pocket schedule like this requires no computer, no smart phone, no Internet connection and is probably way faster than any of those. It can sit in a pile on the counter of a coffee shop and be tucked in a wallet and used immediately.
I imagine there are scores, if not hundreds, of these highly used node connections. Would it make sense to print all these individual pocket schedules? Maybe not a bad idea. By being enterprising, this might be a good way to get more people on the buses while partnering with local businesses. Why not get a local business to sponsor the schedules to offset the costs? They could pay for the printing (which could be really cheap), and it would be a relatively low-cost advertising vehicle where they would get a little space on the pocket schedule for their marketing message. It's highly geographically targeted marketing, since the only people who would be interested in that particular pocket schedule are those who travel to or from that one location.
Like the invisible tunnel, this is the sort of low-cost or no-cost measure that could help the system run better. Intelligently done, these simple little pocket schedules could be provided for free (both to passengers and for Metro) to thousands of riders and make riding the bus much easier.
 | Steve Offutt has been working at the confluence of business and environment for almost 20 years, with experience in climate change solutions, green building, business-government partnerships, transportation demand management, and more. He lives in Arlington with his wife and two children and is a cyclist, pedestrian, transit rider and driver.   |
Comments
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I've always thought it would be cool if there was a simple online wizard that could set this up for you based on a few criteria you enter, then just formats and prints it out for you.
by spookiness on Aug 21, 2009 2:08 pm • link • report
Not to give you any more work, of course.
by Michael Perkins on Aug 21, 2009 2:18 pm • link • report
I'd be happy to take on the project of generating the necessary PDFs. The only real trick would be to get a four-column spreadsheet defining which stops should be included:
- Stop A (GTFS ID)
- Stop B (GTFS ID)
- Human-readable description of A->B
- Human-readable description of B->A
by Tom on Aug 21, 2009 2:37 pm • link • report
You could do it yourself Or businesses, civic associations, etc. could print them in bulk (maybe adding their logo) and give them away for free.
They should always include some standard info, though:
But yes, I can see how these would fill a need (smaller and easier to use than bus maps), and it'd be a low-/no-cost solution.
by Gavin Baker on Aug 21, 2009 2:40 pm • link • report
A person could enter the two destinations from a form and then get a result page back with timetables for both directions (roundtrip).
The resulting page could be designed with a chart of one direction adjacent to a chart of the opposite direction. Then, it could be cut down and folded in half, and there would be a front-and-back wallet-sized card available for the person showing both directions.
by Joey on Aug 21, 2009 4:10 pm • link • report
In my (imaginary) version, you'd be able to combine multiple bus routes, because sometimes there are several that work for your particular trip. I'd let the user select any number of "panels" of a variety of sizes (business card, credit card, 3x5 card, half-sheet, etc.) for printing. For each panel you'd choose a bus stop location (even better if you could select multiple nearby stops if the routes you want use different stops) and you'd select which bus routes going in which directions you want for that panel and the time/day range. You could change the style of routes: bold, italic, green, etc.--in my case, both the A4 and A5 work, but the A5 is faster, so I want to know at a glance which is which if I'm planning when to arrive at the bus stop. In my schedule, the A5 (which runs much less frequently) is in bold. A simple A <--> B would get two panels, Weekdays + Saturday would get 4 panels.
The PDFs would be free for anyone to use, and perhaps it could be tied to an online printing firm if you want yours laminated, or on cardstock, or if you want several to give away.
by thm on Aug 21, 2009 4:29 pm • link • report
by Tom on Aug 21, 2009 4:31 pm • link • report
Hey Steve
I was reading your post on Pocket Schedules
(http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3266) and It's right up my alley because I've spent a huge amount of time trying to get commuter rail (and some subway) schedules into that 'easy' point A -> point B type format. I was originally frustrated at how difficult it was to use Long Island Railroad schedules between finding the right
direction, stations, deciphering holiday information and special schedules, and dealing with schedule updates, so I attempted to solve that.
The site i developed is http://thenexttrain.com/ and it's geared towards finding schedules like http://thenexttrain.com/at/marc/washington-union-station/to/bwi-airport/ (lots of google users now find the right schedule by just searching for 'union station schedule to bwi'. The two main advantages it has over paper sized copies are not having to deal with schedule udpates,
and that it incorporates delay information (when available). I've also got matching iGoogle widgets and an iPhone app.
Granted it's commuter rail, and not buses but I'd love to hear what you think of the general approach, and perhaps thoughts on the implementation.
-- Jehiah Czebotar
by Steve O on Aug 21, 2009 4:48 pm • link • report
What pre-designed pocket schedules can do, though, is give the information to a non-user in a simple way. For instance, someone who stopped into the Caribou Coffee in Shirlington might pick up a pocket schedule and be shocked to learn that there are 165 buses a day that run to the Pentagon from the Shirlington bus station. Suddenly they might decide it's not so hard after all.
Similarly, when I lived in Philadelphia in the early 90's I lived in a large apartment complex next to two hotels. I suspect a pretty significant number of guests at those hotels wanted to go see Independence Mall (6 miles away). Because I lived there, I knew how to do that easily and quickly on the buses, but I bet most of those guests ended up trying to drive there and were unable to find parking and got frustrated. An easy to use point-to-point guide would have been perfect. One of the hotels stocked bus schedules, but they contained so much extra useless information and didn't combine the two different bus routes that would get one there.
by Steve O on Aug 21, 2009 5:00 pm • link • report
@thm You have collected some very valuable information about a particular route that could be useful to many others, but there isn't a good way to disseminate it.
I've often thought that if there were some sort of a wiki set up for point to point travel, people could populate it with their personal knowledge. In addition to the schedule, useful info like the 4:13 tends to run early or if you just miss the bus #999 you have 3 minutes to go a block over and catch the #998--that sort of knowledge that comes with experience--would be awesome to share. But there's no good way to do it that I know of.
by Steve O on Aug 21, 2009 5:06 pm • link • report
I sat down one evening and made myself a wallet-sized paper schedule in Excel similar to ones above that included all the information for each of my combinations throughout the morning and evening rush hours.
Fortunately, I've changed apartments and jobs making my commuting decisions a lot easier now, but I could still see benefits of such a widget - especially for the suburban commuter on the fence about taking public transit.
by Craig on Aug 23, 2009 1:04 pm • link • report
Stop 1 Stop 2
5:35 5:38
5:48 5:51
6:01 6:06
Why not this? Where you can just see how it rolls over.
Stop 1 Stop 2
5 :35 :38
:48 :51
6 :01 :06
by Cullen on Aug 24, 2009 8:15 am • link • report
I actually find WMATA.com's point to point function frustrating because there is no way to display an entire day's worth on one page and with one click.
So - enthusiastic yes to this idea, and how helpful it is.
by Gooch on Aug 24, 2009 8:38 am • link • report
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