Making Public Transportation Work, Part 4: System Design and Networks : Transportation Alternatives

I have written about the regrettable disappearance of system design in prior National Bus Trader articles (see https://transalt.com/article/survival-and-prosperity-part-4-service-concepts/; https://transalt.com/article/cutting-costs-by-mastering-time-and-space-part-i/ – including the substitution of robots for live Earthlings for creating routes and schedules and selecting stops (see https://transalt.com/article/drivers-v-robots-part-7-betrayal-by-robots/). Today, the term “system design” is most-commonly applied to digital systems or applications. In transportation, system design refers to an effort to configure the vehicles of a single mode, or a combination of modes, into some coherent form so that they work together as a system.

At its best, the design of a public transportation system includes multiple modes (or types of service) working in concert to produce a network that makes most trips using all or part of the network as safe, efficient and reliable as reasonably possible. Focused mostly on safety, few attorneys litigating public transportation cases — “experts” on the law and not the subject matter – fail to recognize, or even care, that both efficiency and reliability (measured primarily in terms of the “on-time performance” of pickups and drop-offs) have a direct and powerful impact on safety.

Reliability and Safety Compromises
Regarding reliability, when any vehicle (by itself or as part of a network) is running behind schedule, drivers are induced (and most accept this inducement) to compromise multiple safety principles in order to catch up (see https://safetycompromises.com as well as 12 installments about this phenomenon in National Bus Trader:

Some safety compromises require only a few seconds to commit. For example, kneeling and (after passengers board and/or alight) raising the front curb-side corner (or the entire curb side) of a bus or motorcoach with a pneumatic suspension system generally consumes about six seconds. But on a “run” with perhaps 100 boardings and/or alightings per hour – not uncommon in dense urban areas – eliminating this procedure 50 times will shave a full five minutes off the run’s “running time” (the actual time it takes the vehicle to go from one end of a route to the other). This is hardly trivial: A full fourth of the roughly 700 lawsuits in which I have served as an expert have involved incidents when passengers were simply getting on or off the vehicle — when it was not even moving.

At the other end of the spectrum, it can easily take a driver five minutes to properly secure a garden variety manual wheelchair – or longer for the most obscure of the more than 5000 types of wheelchairs and motorized scooters on the market. The variety of even the most obvious safety compromises (see https://safetycompromises.com) and the time saved by each commission of one can easily allow a driver to “make up the time” when his or her schedule would otherwise run 20 or even more minutes behind schedule if all the (almost-always) required safety procedures were executed.

Overall, safety compromises were the most direct cause of roughly one half of all the lawsuits on which I served as an expert. Usually, the underlying cause is a tight schedule. And my sample is hardly the only proof: A 2011 study found that 73.6 percent of the wheelchairs transported on transit buses were either not secured or not properly and completely secured. And compared to modes like non-emergency medical service, where most service providers are paid $X/trip and $Y/mile – effectively paid nothing when the vehicle (a) is not moving (b) with a passenger on board – transit services (public or private) are paid for by the hour.

Periodically vehicles run behind schedule through no fault of the driver or the scheduler. I am not taking about rush-hour traffic, delays from which should be factored into the scheduling process. So too should be the time to secure a wheelchair, and execute the numerous other procedures needed to keep the passengers (and pedestrians, motorists, bicyclists, motorcyclists, skateboarders, scooter-users and other travelers) safe. I am talking about detours, parades, construction, collisions (involving other vehicles) and irregular aberrations that are less-predictable, one-of-a-kind or which last only for brief periods. Otherwise, tight schedules are common in a range of public transportation modes (see https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-1-the-other-achilles-heel/; https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-2-lessons-from-the-nemt-sector/; https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-3-fixed-route-transit-service-2/; https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-4-complementary-paratransit-service/; https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-5-motorcoach-service/ and https://transalt.com/article/tight-schedules-part-6-schoolbus-service/).

Regardless, it requires only a crayon-level understanding of transportation to grasp why the driver of a vehicle running behind schedule would commit safety compromises – even while drivers regularly testify that there are no consequences if and when they run behind schedule – completely understandable by anyone who believes in Santa or the Easter Bunny, or that his “fridge is a portal to Wakanda.”

Efficiency and Safety Compromises
The connection between efficiency and safety is a bit harder to grasp, although just as powerful as that between on-time performance and safety. As a starting point (to not write a book about this), the more inefficient a service is, the more prone, in general, many drivers are to commit safety compromises. When systems devolve beyond inefficiency to chaos, all type and manner of forces are unleashed which expose passengers and others (see parenthetical above) to risk. I have occasionally seen buses leapfrog one another. Drivers of fixed route buses whose performance is rarely if ever monitored often improvise route deviations – often operating on streets that are not designed for vehicles with large wheelbases to travel on or turn onto and off of (see The danger deterrent long wheelbases and left turns/ and Dancing in the oncoming lane long wheelbases and right turns).

I have been involved in numerous crossing/turning cases where drivers rolled around turns (usually to “beat the light” that would have delayed them a minute or so) only to nail pedestrians in the perpendicular crosswalk). Almost every driver involved testifies that he or she did not see the victim, and that the victim (or plaintiff or decedent) “came out of nowhere” – even when the nose of the bus came to a stop five to 10 feet beyond the point of impact – a mathematical impossibility when one considers (a) reaction time and (b) braking time and distance (see https://transalt.com/article/the-folly-of-fake-facts/ and https://transalt.com/article/the-folly-of-fake-facts-part-2/).

In demand-responsive modes like paratransit, NEMT service, taxi and limousine service, where a “familiarity with the service area” was common in the age before “navigators” emerged, Today’s drivers occasionally make turns at the last possible moment or get mixed up by the discrepancy between their navigator’s information and the incompetence of signage.

For those unfamiliar with these states or cities, lettering on most signs in New York and New Jersey is white on a forest-green background – perfectly camouflaged for those country roads in wooded areas on days where the skies are covered with cumulous clouds. In Los Angeles and many other California cities, the lettering is white on a powder-blue background – perfectly camouflaged against the same clouds and “sky blue” surrounding them. And these are under optimal conditions, not at night and/or during a thunderstorm. Forget about the fact that most personal vehicles today – black or various shades of gray – are the same color of the roadway.

Thankfully, Today’s navigators provide redundant information, warning motorists of the upcoming turns and announcing them again just before they encountering them. But particularly with services deploying larger vehicles, drivers rely on navigators less often than ordinary motorists (like TNC drivers), or taxi, paratransit or NEMT drivers, these color-spectrum choices compound the discrepancies between the navigators and color-compromised signage. In the days before navigators became common, I have served as an expert on cases where drivers crashed into the thick cement wedge separating freeways, or where they drove up an off-ramp. Regardless, even when chaos emerges only for short periods, it can instantly translate into a serious incident.

System Design and Networks
As a matter of efficiency, on-time performance and safety (again, often interrelated and overlapping), a coherent network of services provides a vast improvement over what transportation professionals refer to as “spaghetti routing.” The most coherent systems employ a strong design whose characteristics are understandable to those who are non-lingual. (I myself designed such a system in Southern California in 1983: see Carson circuit schedule and Route d and g).

Many or most fixed route transit systems essentially have no design – with the exception of some routes serving as “commuter/express” service connecting groups of pickups at one end of the line and groups of drop-offs at the other (and reversing the direction in the opposing peak period). Instead, vehicles deployed in what is often referred to as “regional service” meander through a sequence of cities, mostly on major “arterials” and “collector streets” (not freeways or, at the other end of the spectrum, “local streets”), focusing stops on what are known as “major trip generators” – mostly commercial, industrial and institutional centers, facilities and buildings. These circuitous routes designed to capture the greatest number of riders are often long, and usually tight. While I suspect some exist during at least the “base period,” I have yet to find a single transit route in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston or anywhere in New Jersey that was not too tight.

One important characteristic of a coherent collection of routes, or a network of services, is that all the routes and/or services form a hierarchy. Passengers can transfer from one to the next in the most efficient manner (which, as noted, is also the safest manner). As noted in Part 3 of this series (see the January, 2023 issue of National Bus Trader subtitled “Feeder Service”), one mode “feeds” its riders into the next: Taxis or TNCs take one to the nearest bus stop, one may transfer from one route to the next, buses feed subway stations, and so on. Total travel time is further reduced when Park-and-Ride lots are abundant (see Making public transportation work part 2: Park and ride lots, and Making public transportation work part 3: Feeder Service which greatly shorten the time and distance passengers must travel by personal vehicle to reach a stop, regardless of how many additional connections may be needed.

All this is hardly innovative. Think about Tarzan swinging from, and transferring to, vine after vine before reaching his destination – often a tree or the back of an elephant (which took him further along in the network). Forget about more advanced civilizations where one traveled by horse or camel to a dock or port where the rider transferred to a boat or ship. Franky, a hierarchy of modes overlapped the end of The Ice Age (which terminated only about 11,500 years ago).

Principles and Pocketbooks
Some of the most rudimentary principles of fixed route design may be found on my website (see Principles system design). Similarly, one may find some of the most rudimentary principles of demand-responsive (door-to-door or curb-to-curb service on this same site (see Principles paratransit system design). Assembling some of these principles to produce a coherent transportation system is not at the crayon level – even while many individual elements of it are (as Tarzan recognized). Yet with a base map of the service area, a couple layers of mylar or acetate and a set of grease crayons, one should easily be able to develop a number of what I call “concept sketches.” Unfortunately, this is a task your robots cannot perform. Instead, they can only optimize the chaos of your failure to do such a thing, or anything else that might resemble some effort toward design.

Even forgetting about safety, another important principle of efficiency is that money does not grow on trees. I am certain that even Tarzan knew this. But as those of us used to currency know, “it takes money to make money.” But in transportation, the enlightened members know that it takes money to save money. Passing the recent infrastructure bill is a decent modern re-start – although it is hardly the Defense Highway Act of 1956. But other than repairing crumbling roads, bridges and tunnels, we must spend money wisely to create the infrastructure to transform the chaos and waste of spaghetti routing into a coherent network of services if we hope to build and/or sustain a public transportation system of almost any kind. Park-and-ride lots and feeder services (again, see https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-2-park-and-ride-lots and https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-3-feeder-service ) are a good starting point – and major keys to success. Otherwise, all the world’s robots (see https://transalt.com/article/the-price-of-digital-madness/ and https://transalt.com/article/drivers-v-robots-part-7-betrayal-by-robots/) will fall far short of what is needed to stifle traffic (an ironic use of language), improve the quality of our lives, and save a streetful of them along the way.

Making Public Transportation Work, Part 4: System Design and Networks

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