Posts about Circulator

Melissa made "a stink about a pregnant lady giving up her seat for someone on crutches," she says, and only then did people offer seats to both of them.

Folks, many people don't want to go around loudly asking others to give up seats. If you see someone who is less physically able than yourself on the bus, please volunteer the seat. If someone asks you to give up a seat or move over to accommodate someone, please cheerily agree.

In particular, the row of seats nearest the door is reserved by law for seniors and persons with disabilities when necessary. If you're in one of those, it's extra important to give up your seat.

Meanwhile, Emily (@TheFrogget) was riding the G8 bus in Bloomingdale. A mom placed her folded stroller on a shelf next to the door; Emily was sitting in the seat immediately adjacent, but there was a seat right across the aisle.

Emily says, "I got the stink eye for 30 mins and then a scolding when she got off. If the bus had been full, I would have happily given her my seat. But there was an open one 3 feet away." The woman didn't ask Emily to move, just fumed that she didn't.

It seems to me that while anyone should have been willing to give up a seat for the mom and child had there been no seats, there's no rule that the seat has to be the one they specifically want when there's another within easy eyeshot of the stroller. On the other hand, if the woman had asked nicely, I'd hope Emily would have happily moved over. Only the woman didn't ask.

What do you think? Have you had any bad (or good) etiquette experiences on buses?

30-minute isochrone from the White House. Image from Mapnificent.

He encouraged cities to move away from the historic North American penchant for putting a bus stop at nearly every corner (something not done in the rest of the world), and expect riders to walk a little more so that service is faster for everyone. Shortening trip times reduces the cost of providing service, which usually means that more service can be provided. It also encourages more people to ride, because it increases the area of the isochrone.

Transit routes that deviate off a direct path to serve poorly-located shopping centers, housing cul-de-sacs, and insular complexes, inconvenience through-riders and make transit less attractive, he said. Anything not built "on the way" is essentially saying, "I only want as much transit service as I alone can support," because those destinations can't be pooled with any other destinations. Once urban areas have taken this built form, it becomes expensive to provide service to them.

He ripped into WMATA's Metrobus map, pointing out that almost every route is shown in red, regardless of how often it runs. That's not helpful, he says, because it's like a roadmap "which doesn't differentiate between a highway and a gravel road."

Section of the DC Metrobus map. Image from WMATA.

Maps like this, which Walker laments are all too common amongst US transit systems, put the onus on the rider to first figure out what routes get them to where they want to go, then consult a complicated schedule to find out how often it runs.

Instead, he said, the map's design should make it as easy as possible on the rider by displaying routes based on frequency. Routes with the most frequent and round-the-clock service "should scream out at you," he insisted. For example, putting routes in a different color would let riders know at a glance if they could easily jump on board and not bother with a timetable.

Poor map design and inscrutable signpost information cost more than just riders. In some cities, it's become so frustrating that officials have thrown up their hands and turned to another form of transit altogether. Walker finds that unconscionable: cities shouldn't build streetcars or new bus systems simply because the existing system is incomprehensible. He pointed to the DC Circulator as a prime example of unnecessary duplication that squanders public resources that would be better spent making the most-used Metrobus routes more frequent and user-friendly.

His point about circulators is instructive for Tysons Corner, where five are planned. Walker says when good bus service is already there, adding circulators can be redundant and wasteful. In Canberra, Australia, planners faced with a similar situation saved lots of money by choosing simply to rebrand a section where many existing bus lines converged as one cohesive service (the "Green Line") with clock-face regularity.

He acknowledged that streetcars do tend to drive economic development because of their perceived permanence and attractiveness compared to buses. But he urged planners to remember that 50 years from now, any economic development potential today will be distant history, but the travel time riders gain from a bus which can navigate around obstacles will endure. He further cautioned against thinking of laying rails as signifying permanence, since most of DC's original streetcar tracks have been paved over.

Above all, Walker emphasized, transit agencies and the governments that fund them should see their job as enhancing freedom by making as much of the region as possible accessible by frequent, reliable service. The other things transit does, such as spurring economic development, providing jobs, protecting the environment and enhancing social equity, are all secondary to this primary purpose of transit.

If you missed Jarrett last week, you can watch his presentation to the Montgomery County Planning Department, below:

	Schedule data			Real-time data
	Public GTFS	Shapes in GTFS	On Google	Tracking	Tracking API
Metrorail	Here		and Bing		Custom
Metrobus		Most1	and Bing		Custom
Circulator (DC)	WMATA2		WMATA2		Nextbus
ART (Arlington)	Here		In process		Connexionz
DASH (Alexandria)	Via email only3
Ride On (Montgomery)	Old?4				More info
The Bus (Prince George's)					Nextbus
MTA (Maryland) commuter bus	Here
MARC	Confusingly5			Here
Fairfax (County) Connector
CUE (Fairfax City)					Nextbus
Loudoun County Transit				Text/email alerts
PRTC
VRE	Unofficial6			Mix of GPS & manual7

¹ WMATA's GTFS file contains most Metrobus routes, but some paths cut diagonally across the grid over some long sections such as freeway or bridge segments of routes.

² Circulator route and schedule data is included as part of the WMATA GTFS feed. However, there are some quality issues such as route names.

³ DASH feed is not publicly available, but officials can provide it via email.

⁴ Ride On's feed no longer appears to be on their website. GTFS Data Exchange has cached a version from December 2010 which was apparently posted in a news release.

⁵ MARC lines are listed in the MTA Maryland feed as lines 300, 301, and 302, which doesn't very easily differentiate them for someone unfamiliar with their GTFS feed.

⁶ Someone not affiliated with VRE created a GTFS file in 2009, but it hasn't been updated since and VRE does not offer an official one.

⁷ VRE has a page with train status which lists some trains' positions through GPS and some from manual reports from the conductor.

What the columns mean

Creating public GTFS feeds (the 1st column) allows someone who's written an app to easily incorporate schedule and route data for a transit agency. GTFS has emerged as a national standard for representing transit feeds, and there's tremendous value in having as many agencies as possible support the same standard. That way, if someone writes an app in Chicago, they can make it work in Denver, Albany, or Miami at the same time.

Most of the transit agencies' feeds including the paths that the vehicles take, but some do not, like DASH. The 2nd column shows this information. Feeds without paths are still usable, but apps that visualize routes, like Transit Near Me, end up showing unsightly diagonal lines cutting across city blocks.

Agencies can also sign a contract with Google to have their routes and schedules on Google Maps. The 3rd column shows agencies which have done this. Some agencies put out their data files, but aren't willing to sign this contract because of indemnification or other clauses which Google unfortunately insists upon. On the flip side, some agencies sign up with Google but then don't publish the GTFS feed publicly.

The agency might provide it to those who ask, or might not, but this dissuades app creators from including this agency, and makes it harder for them to get regular updates. Every agency should strive to host a public and up-to-date GTFS feed on their site so that anyone building apps can easily incorporate that agency's services into the tool.

The other type of open data is real-time locations or predictions. To make this possible, agencies first have to deploy AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) technology on their buses or trains (the 4th column). The main obstacle is that this is somewhat expensive; a physical device has to go into each vehicle, and those devices then need some amount of maintenance over time.

Once an agency has tracking, it's relatively simple to offer a computer interface for apps to access and tell riders about this information (the 5th column). Most of the agencies with tracking offer such an interface, but while Ride On, MARC, and Loudoun Transit all have public tracking sites that provide some services to riders, but no way for other apps to tap into the information those sites contain.

What agencies can do

Agencies with red X's on this chart can start thinking about how to provide schedule and/or real-time open data. Creating GTFS files isn't extremely difficult, though it does require some staff time to actually do it. For agencies that use scheduling software, the manufacturers of that software often offer modules to export data as GTFS as well.

Some GTFS feeds could benefit from quality fixes. For example, WMATA's Metrorail GTFS file doesn't show the specific paths trains take, and paths are missing for a few bus routes. The "Transparent Metro Data Sets" Application Programming Interface (API), a special interface WMATA created to offer access to much of its data, does include the correct paths. But many people develop apps to access GTFS files for multiple cities. It's much less likely they will put in extra development effort to specifically pull just these route shapes from this unique API.

The Circulator's routes are part of the WMATA GTFS feed, which makes things even easier for apps than having to download a separate feed. One problem is that the route names are all cryptic: there's "DCDGR" for the Dupont-Georgetown-Rosslyn Circulator, or "DC98" for the route which replaced the former 98 bus. Those are fine for internal systems inside the agencies, but they aren't very clear to riders.

Agencies which have provided their data to Google but don't offer the feeds publicly (like DASH, Ride On, and MARC) should post those feeds on their websites and publicly link to the feeds. They are already creating the GTFS files for Google, so it's a trivial step to also let others download the same files.

WMATA also has much of the route data for other local bus systems in the region as well, which it uses in its trip planner. Agencies which don't have GTFS files can give WMATA permission to include their data in its GTFS feed, as the Circulator does.

Agencies with AVL systems already on their vehicles should set up APIs to give apps access to the locations or predictions, and agencies without AVL can work toward getting the budget necessary to deploy AVL.

What others can do

Transit industry associations and vendors which sell technology to transit agencies can all encourage open data to be part of any contract. Vendors can encourage agencies to open their data and provide services to do so, and associations can encourage agencies to ask their vendors for these services.

The industry can also help move toward a clear standard for bus tracking. GTFS has become a standard for schedule and route data because large numbers of agencies went ahead and offered GTFS files. But there is not yet a consensus around what format to use to offer real-time predictions.

WMATA built its own API which provides the data in a certain format. Circulator, The Bus, and CUE all use Nextbus for tracking, which has its own API. ART uses another service, Connexionz. This unfortunately means that anyone building a real-time application and wants to incorporate multiple services has to support at least 3 different APIs.

There are efforts to create such standards, like GTFS-Realtime, but this hasn't realized the same widespread adoption as GTFS, nor has any other standard.

It's still possible to build apps without a standard, and the Mobility Lab's real-time screen project does connect to all 3 different systems in our region. But that requires extra work, not just for the Mobility Lab but for every other app creator who wants to offer predictions for multiple transit agencies.

The easier we make it to build apps, the more we'll get. Ultimately, it would be great for one standard to emerge, and for the various vendors like Nextbus to agree to all offer data to apps in that same standard format.

Update: Commenter intermodal commuter pointed out the real-time status page for VRE. It combines some train positions from GPS and some from manual reports from conductors. There is not an API to access the data. I've corrected the chart.

Update 2: Commenter Adam noted that MARC is actually contained in the MTA Maryland GTFS file, but listed only as routes 300, 301, and 302, which we didn't realize were not commuter buses upon examining the feed. But you can see the MARC lines on Transit Near Me (for example, center around Union Station).

Also, ACCS Web Manager Joe Chapline posted a status update about ART's efforts to get into Google Transit; according to Chapline, this was delayed for a time due to contract issues, and now is awaiting action by the Google legal department, which I know from past personal experience is often understaffed and backlogged.

The Tourmobile's former owner, Tom Mack, did his share of lobbying against the Circulator, which gave residents plenty to hate about the service, but it was NPS which kept renewing the contract year after year (possibly illegally).

The Park Service could go one of several ways at this point. They could sign a new exclusive contract with a different provider, even the Circulator. That would serve most Mall transportation needs much better. But it might not meet the needs of those who want a tour.

And what if another kind of transportation arises? For example, NPS officials explained their harassment of pedicabs as necessary to protect the exclusive contract. They're now devising new pedicab rules, but if a future new transportation service wants to run on the Mall, would NPS simply say that's not possible because the only transportation can now be Circulator buses and pedicabs, nothing else?

NPS should instead take a different tack, where future concession contracts give an operator the right to provide a service but still allow NPS to allow other services of a similar type, but which serve different market segments, just as a $1 bus and a $32 tour serve different market segments.

The same should go for food vending, bicycling and more. NPS rejected a proposed farmers' market in Rawlins Park, on E Street west of the White House, saying it conflicted with the vending contracts for hot dogs over on the Mall. We've gotten conflicting reports from NPS and spokesperson Bill Line (who continues to not reply to any emails) about reasons for rejecting Capital Bikeshare, but one is that their all-day bike rental contract interferes.

Fresh produce for office workers does not conflict with snacks for tourists, and all-day recreational bike rental isn't the same as point-to-point bike sharing. The concession policies should generally recognize that a large and diverse area like the Mall, not to mention the small neighborhood parks, could benefit from more than one kind of transportation, more than one type of food, and so on.

Update: Lydia points out an important nuance, that as far as we can tell, NPS's contract wasn't actually exclusive, or at least wasn't as exclusive as they claim. They probably could have allowed Circulator (except Mack got a few Congressional Republicans to shoot warning glances at NPS across a hearing table), and the farmers' market, and pedicabs, and Capital Bikeshare.

Guest Services, the food and bicycle master concessionaire, told Joey Katzen that NPS hadn't even talked to them about whether they'd object to CaBi. In other words, this exclusivity thing seems to be as much an excuse as a real problem. Or, if there is an actual law making Circulator, CaBi, farmers' markets, etc. impermissible, NPS was never willing to explain it.

Bottom line: What's dying is the Tourmobile, but what really needs to die is NPS's argument that the transportation concession must be exclusive, whether or not it ever really had to.

Dr. Gridlock tried the walk from Arlington Cemetery, and found it an inspirational one, with the walk over Memorial Bridge giving great views of the Lincoln Memorial. The trickiest parts are around Memorial Circle, where unsafe crosswalks and the Park Police's response make pedestrian crossings difficult.

WMATA also strongly recommends purchasing fare cards prior to the trip. Quite commonly at major events, people waiting to purchase cards for the return trip cause backups at Metro stations.

What about biking? Certainly the crowds around the Memorial itself make biking an inconsiderate choice in close proximity to the ceremony, but bike parking and/or a bike valet a short distance away would allow people to bike to the event and reduce Metro congestion. Unfortunately, there appears to be no bike parking at the memorial at all.

According to Shane Farthing of Washington Area Bicyclist Association, "WABA always looks forward to providing bike valets that allow bicyclists to more easily access major events. In this case, unfortunately, we were not contacted by the organizers, and generally we do not seek to provide valets without the support of the event organizers."

That's not terribly surprising, as the MLK, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation website makes no mention of biking whatsoever. It appears as if biking was not even considered as an transportation option. In contrast, the a shuttle bus for drivers is provided from the parking lots at RFK stadium.

No bikes will be allowed on the Metrorail system on the 28th (even for reverse direction trips far from the memorial), due to the expected large crowds. Cyclists can still use the bike racks located on the front of Metrobuses, however.

In the end, despite all of the advice, people will surely stream from the Smithsonian Metro in droves. If past events are any guide, the shared endeavor of making the hike together will simply heighten the experience, as people from around the country share a common sense of excitement to commemorate the man who marched on Washington on that very day 48 years ago.

But when the newness fades, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial becomes just one of many, we will have a new crop of visitors who discover that many of the memorials just aren't that easy to get to.

A standard walk around the Mall traverses 3.5 miles, from the Smithsonian Metro, taking in all the memorials, and ending at the Foggy Bottom Metro. National attention is focused on the obesity epidemic, and we've all seen visitors having a hard time on the Mall. Large numbers of our fellow Americans are disabled for any number of reasons, elderly visitors may be past their prime walking years, and small children just aren't ready to walk that far yet. There is not, nor should there be, a physical fitness requirement to exploring our common cultural heritage.

But what are the other options?

One could drive, of course. Many of us do. But parking in the area is, at best, chancy, and it's typically only an option for locals who are comfortable with the very confusing road layout. I don't recommend it to visitors, nor is more parking in the area realistic or desirable.

Riding a bike is an increasingly popular option. It does little to help disabled and elderly visitors, but a 3-mile bike ride is far less daunting than a 3-mile hike.

Bike infrastructure on the Mall lags behind the rest of the city. Bike racks are few and far between, and events such as the upcoming dedication show that bike planning is not yet as fully integrated as it could be. Like so many things on the Mall, Congress has a responsibility to properly allocate funds for improvement, but a cultural shift in the Park Service's mentality would go far.

The Park Service should immediately drop their intellectually weak objections to Capital Bikeshare and recognize that participating in the program is a low-cost way to increase access to the Mall for visitors and locals alike.

There's no reason for the Park Service to be perceived as anti-bike. After all, they lead free bike tours of the Mall right now. This is an easy fix and is in keeping with much of the excellent programming the Park Service offers.

Better integrating taxi service, both traditional and pedicabs, would be another relatively low-cost way to improve access. Traditional taxi cabs are generally not at all difficult to hail, but designated taxi pick-up points, discreet signage and perhaps even a cell phone call-in guide on how to use a cab would better marry tired visitors with cab drivers looking to relieve them of their cash. Believe it or not, many of our exurban visitors find the cab system, or cabs in general, daunting.

And, of course, the Park Service has been needlessly antagonistic to pedicabs. In addition to the press reports, including the highly publicized tasing, I've personally witnessed between overwhelmed and aggressive police officers and confused and frustrated pedicab drivers.

Clear, understandable, and transparent regulations will give clarity to everyone, from visitors to drivers to Park Police officers. Most of the attention has focused on individual Park Police actions, but it seems that individual officers are operating with unclear directives from above, lack of consistent standards, and strained staffing issues.

Finally, the memorials lack anything approaching a true mass transit system, thanks to an exclusive Tourmobile contract which prohibited Circulator service for years. Fortunately, NPS director Jon Jarvis has made it clear that change is coming to transit on the Mall.

When you take your first stroll to the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial, whether for the dedication or just on any other day, take a minute to chat with a visitor from out of town. All Americans deserve better access to this new memorial, and we should encourage those visitors to call their elected representatives and demand it. We may just have a chance to dramatically improve everyone's ability to enjoy our nation's monuments.

The route options have become smaller in scale than what was initially proposed late last year and discussed at the public meeting in early June.

Residents rejected that route, saying they preferred to have the Circulator cross the 11th Street Bridge instead of passing through Anacostia to the South Capitol Bridge, where it was originally slated to become an extension of the Union Station-Navy Yard route. Instead, DDOT will create a new route.

The original route crossed the bridge and then passed through Anacostia, Skyland, and the neighborhoods along Alabama Avenue to the Congress Heights Metro station. The new route does not serve either Anacostia or Congress Heights Metro stations, and option 1 directly reaches no Metro stations at all.

A fleet of six buses will be dedicated to the new route. Though it will be limited in scope, the Circulator's launch east of the river should help existing business along the faded commercial corridors of Good Hope Road SE and Alabama Avenue SE.

DDOT has made a a new survey available online until early next week to gather a last round of citizen input. Residents can give further feedback at a meeting on Tuesday, August 2 at the Anacostia library before six dedicated buses launch the new route in early October.

"As of yesterday, we had around twenty surveys," said Aaron Overman, Deputy Associate Director of Mass Transit at DDOT. "We have recognized the need to do more manual, analog paper outreach in Ward 8." To encourage more input from residents, DDOT has reached out to Councilmember Barry's Ward 8 field office and Matthews Memorial Church.

Forum on TOD and housing in Prince George's, organized by the Coalition for Smarter Growth and Envision Prince George's featuring David Bowers of Enterprise Community Partners, Rodney Harrell of AARP, and developer Jair Lynch. Monday, July 11, 6:30-8:30 at the CSC Building, across from New Carrollton Metro station, 7900 Harkins Road, Lanham.

Circulator east of the river public meeting to present alternatives and get resident feedback on the route. Tuesday, July 12, 7-8:30 pm at the Southeast Neighborhood Library, 403 7th Street SE, DC.

Action Committee for Transit discussion about how White Flint advocates built support for Smart Growth, featuring Dan Hoffman and Barnaby Zall from Friends of White Flint. Tuesday, July 12, 7:30 pm at Silver Spring Center, 8818 Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, in the Woodside Conference Room.

Lunchtime workshop on Eco-City Alexandria with Bill Skrabak of the City of Alexandria and Joe Schilling of Virginia Tech discussing Alexandria's sustainability initiatives and community indicators developed based on best practices from around the country. Thursday, July 14, noon-1 pm at the Charles Houston Recreation Center, 901 Wythe Street, Alexandria.

Maryland Avenue SW plan public meeting to present draft recommendations for the CSX railway corridor between 4th and 12th Streets, SW, and adjacent property. Thursday, July 14, 6:30-8:30 at 1100 4th Street SW, DC in the 2nd floor meeting room.

St. Elizabeth's East public meeting to give feedback on land use and transportation concepts for the redevelopment of the east campus. Thursday, July 14, 7-9 pm at Imagine Southeast Public Charter School (Old Congress Heights School), 3100 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE, DC.

Takoma Langley Crossroads urban design guidelines discussion between the Planning Board and the community. The guidelines will govern development around the future Purple Line stop. Thursday, July 14, 7:00 pm at the Takoma Rec Center, 7315 New Hampshire Avenue, Takoma Park.

You can find these and many more events on the Greater Greater Washington calendar. If you know an event we should include, send it to events@ggwash.org.