Posts about Boulder

Transit

16? 2? 53A? &%@**#!!

by Steve Offutt   •   June 10, 2009 10:00 am

In Arlington (and many places) streets are numbered, which can be pretty useful: 10th St. is between 9th and 11th, which can be a huge help to those trying to find an address. In Arlington, the buses are also numbered: 41, 51, 52, 53 (A?), 61, 62, 67, 74, 75, 82. But what do these numbers mean?

Unlike the streets, a rider can't use the numbers to help find the bus, figure out where it's going, or derive nearly any useful information at all. To the rider, they are entirely meaningless. I asked around in Arlington County Commuter Services and virtually no one knew the "system" behind the numbers. Eventually I found one person who had a clue about the system but readily admitted that it was, in essence, arbitrarily contrived.

Metro's numbering is even more opaque. Take the #2 bus. It comes in 6 varieties. There's the 2A, 2B, 2C, 2G, and 2W. Then the 2T has a separate timetable entirely. The 2W and the 2T are so different from the other 2's, they need a separate map and timetables.

Why even call them #2's? I'll bet you there isn't a single rider who can explain why those buses are called #2, why there are 6 different ones, why those particular letters of the alphabet are used, and why the 2W and 2T are somehow paired with the other 2's.

The numbering is worthless to the rider, who is, after all, the customer. Here's a system that not only provides zero useful information but actually provides the disservice of confusing customers.

Imagine a town's streets were numbered like this: 8th, 11th, 5th, 1st, 4th, 9th, 2nd, 7th, 6th, 10th, 3rd, 12th. There's a system, revealed at the end of this post, but the order is effectively meaningless. If you tell someone you live on 5th Street you still have to describe where it is: "I live on 5th, which is between 11th and 1st."

The numbers have become meaningless. Actually, this "system" is even worse than that; it creates more confusion than purpose. Better that the streets were given names like colors or trees.

Certainly the buses need some identification, as does everything else: streets, animals, our friends, schools, devices, food. They all have names, and those names evoke meaning.

Imagine if all the food in the grocery were just numbers. "Be sure to pick up some 22, 135, 16 and—oh yes—311 on your way home, honey." I find it hard enough to remember bread, milk and artichoke hearts, and—oh yes—toilet paper! Eventually I would learn that 22 is milk, but it's so much harder. Our brains are not wired to apply numbers in an arbitrary way like that. We don't remember our friends by their phone numbers.

From early childhood we learn that numbers are most usefully used as ordinal or cardinal identifiers. They help us put things in order or quantify them. But on buses they serve neither purpose (these are called "nominal" numbers), and so we have to deliberately undo a lifetime of learning and try to understand the number on the bus as nothing more than an abstraction that equates to a name.

Better the bus be called the "phor" than 4; it would actually be easier. In fact, the Metrorail lines being identified with colors is easier to remember than if they were numbered. And, although the colors are also essentially arbitrary, it is easier for the brain to bring meaning to them.

Hasn't the current system been working for generations? Just because something has been done for decades doesn't make it good or leave no room for improvement. In fact, just the opposite: often it's the things that we assume ought to be a certain way are the things that should be questioned the hardest. Also, how do we know it's been working if we haven't tried something different to compare it with?

Boulder, Colorado has thrown out the number system, at least partially. Many of the buses have names: Hop, Skip, Stampede, Bolt, Dash, etc. The more complete names are things like "Skip Along Broadway" and "Dash down South Boulder Road." That's useful information to a customer. There's the Jump (also called the Short Jump) and the Long Jump, which is an extension of the Jump.

Recently, we discussed incorporating the Circulator buses into the Metro map. One commenter suggested that with more Circulators it may be necessary to start numbering them. Instead, how about the "Mall Circulator" for the one on the mall. Isn't that way better than the #4 Circulator? We could have the K Street Circulator, or make it cute and call it The Lobbyist Loader. Or the Union George, to incorporate the termini.

If the goal of transit is to help people get around better and more easily, that goal needs to consider everything: ease of use, cost, convenience and more. The names of the buses are a key piece of information critical to people using the system. Is Boulder's the best system? I don't know, but it's a lot better than everywhere else. The only system that would be worse than the arbitrary number system in common use is a system in which the buses have no identification at all.

(Answer to street ordering puzzle: The streets are listed in alphabetical order.)

Transit

Transit pricing: Time to go "all you can eat"?

by Michael Perkins   •   February 26, 2009 10:43 am

When you pay for transportation, whether it's for driving a private car or taking mass transit, there's a continuum of payment methods, with "pay-per-use" on one end of the scale, and "unlimited use" on the other.

Photo by gregula.

Does the choice of method matter? It should. People make choices about how they get around based on how much the next trip costs them. With unlimited use, the next trip is free. With pay per use, the next trip can cost a lot, because not only are you paying the cost of an additional trip, but you're paying a fraction of the fixed costs.

Most people pay per trip for transit in the Washington region. Meanwhile, many other transit agencies use an "all you can eat" model with their regular customers. In New York City, with the highest transit ridership in the nation, most riders buy weekly or monthly unlimited ride MetroCards. Unlimited ride holders don't think twice about hopping on the subway for almost any trip.

Metro sells about 35,000 unlimited weekly bus passes per week, and about an eighth as many rail passes. We should implement more convenient, reasonably priced monthly or weekly passes. WMATA's effort to integrate the existing passes with SmarTrip cards is a good start. However, the rail pass is still separate from the bus pass, and the rail pass only makes financial sense for those that ride the longest distances.

The difficulty with rail passes in Washington compared to other systems is distance-based fares. For other systems, the provider chooses a weekly price, which is typically 9-12 single rides. For distance-based fares, how should you choose the price to base it on? If you choose about 10 times the maximum fare, it's a terrible deal for most and you don't end up selling many passes. (This is almost what we do currently; it's $39.00 for a pass and the maximum fare is $4.50.) If you choose 10 times the minimum fare, it's expensive for the transit agency, and there's a lot of revenue loss compared to regular fares.

SmarTrip cards are smart enough to have customizable weekly passes. You could choose a fare level and pay ten times that amount per week automatically by subscription. All your rides that are less than that would be free, while any fare above that amount would be deducted from your account balance. This would have the effect of "pay for your commute and the rest is free". This is just like wireless phone service, where you pay for a certain amount of daytime (peak) minutes and get your nights and weekends for free. Right now WMATA has this policy, but there are only two potential fare levels, at around $26.40 for the cheaper "Short Rail" pass (equivalent to commuting downtown from approximately Bethesda), and $39.00 for the more expensive unlimited rail pass (which would be a good deal for anyone commuting downtown from White Flint or further). Someone who commutes a short distance isn't likely to buy one. Additionally, the passes are inconvenient, requiring purchase of a paper farecard, and for the short rail pass, carrying exitfare to make up the difference for each trip.

Transit agencies still get the same amount of revenue, but instead of paying for each trip, the employees don't pay anything extra. This program reduced the number of parking spaces needed for Colorado UniversityUniversity of Colorado, and increased the number of employees taking public transit downtown. Boulder City staff were happy to talk to me about the program. Based on the materials they provided, the program seems like steroids for transit. People are many times more likely to use transit, even buses, when they have the pass. Neighborhoods are allowed to organize and buy passes for everyone on the block edit: RTD has placed a moratorium on new neighborhoods entering the program as they work to collect data from a soon-to-be-released smartcard. Even though the price of a ECO pass has risen dramatically (RTD has hiked the prices more than 50% since 2003), so has transit ridership and pass usage.

Unlimited passes are also an interesting idea for sporting or entertainment events. In that case, the stadium or ballpark would add a fee for every ticket, transferring the revenue to the transit agency. In exchange, the sporting event tickets would act as a day pass (perhaps after a certain time in the afternoon).

Having to pay for something creates a psychological obstacle to consuming more of it. In the case of transit, we want to lower those hurdles, especially off-peak where our transit systems have excess capacity, and more riders mean more revenue but not higher costs. "All you can eat" pricing does just that.