mundane things that really matter: stop spacing

As part of its Transit Effectiveness Project, San Francisco Muni is finally proposing a consistent stop spacing plan, which will involve removing many stops that are too close together.  

Stop spacing is important because if you can get people to gather at fewer stops, you get a faster service.

On a line that's designed to provide continuous local access (as opposed to a "limited-stop" or "Rapid" line), stops should be spaced as far apart as possible while still providing access. Muni suggests 800-1000ft (250-300m) spacing on level ground.  That means that once you're on the street where the bus runs, you might have to walk 500 ft to your stop. Currently the stops are often much closer.

Politically, though, stop removal is hard. People whose ride will be faster usually don't make a lot of positive comments when such things are proposed, but you do hear from people who are going to lose their stop, and their neighbors and friends.  So these proposals often get beaten down.

Muni is smart to be doing this all at once, as part of a consisent city-wide plan.  In the past, planners sometimes tried to remove stops one at a time, but that approach gave the appearance that Muni was randomly picking on particular people.  A consistent city-wide stop spacing policy eliminates that argument, because it's clear that you're trying to create a logical and consistent system for everyone.  It's good to see, too, that the plan is getting positive comments from people who understand that transit needs to be faster.  

I'd say that this should have been done decades ago, but as someone who was a San Francisco activist in the pre-internet age, I doubt we could have amassed the voices of people who want transit to be faster.  Activism in those days was about going to meetings, and you only do that if you feel really strongly about something.  Thanks to the internet, it's now easy to make a comment about something that you feel only marginally strongly about.  That's the kind of feeling most people will have about a proposal to make their commute 2-3 minutes faster by removing some stops.  But if leaders are to have the courage to improve transit efficiency, those lukewarm feelings -- feelings that can motivate a comment on a blog but would never bring someone to a public meeting -- are exactly what we need to hear.  

Comments

[Doug Allen]

I am curious if there is any research showing how ridership falls off with a longer walk length? Do the running time gains always offset this loss?

Particularly for elderly or vulnerable passengers, I have the feeling that going past 1,000 feet has a real negative effect, especially on non-commute trips.

I also wonder whether there aren't some reasonable exceptions. For example, in low ridership areas, there may not be passengers at successive stops. In that case, closer spacing does not slow things down.

Another situation I run across in Portland, Oregon is the transfer at a one-way couplet. At these particular locations only, I would advocate a near-side stop at the first street, and a far-side stop at the second street, giving a spacing of only about 380 feet (in Portland, longer elsewhere) but making transfers much more palatable. I hate waiting on board a bus for a red light so that I can be carried through the intersection, only to get off and then wait as a pedestrian for that same light, in order to get to my transfer stop, often missing a bus that actually arrived later than my bus. If all transfers between two intersecting routes could be accomplished with only a bus-length walk, and no need to cross the street, this would seem to outweigh the occasional extra stop involved.

[Jarrett at HumanTransit.org]

There's a lot of data about patronage impact of walking distance in general, and that's led to the view that 400m/0.25mi is an acceptable catchment. We also know that people will walk further to better service, so distances of up to 800m/0.5 mi are used around rapid transit stations.

Particular needs of the elderly will not show up in these figures because they're a small share of the population in most cases. Special services for them can be the answer. In the long run, the elderly need help in understanding the transportation consequences of their locational choices, just as we all do.

[Alon Levy]

Most rapid transit services have longer average interstations than 800 meters. The Métro is infamous for having very short station spacing, ranging from 400 to 700 meters, and the New York City Subway's local lines have short interstations as well, but elsewhere, averages of 1 km or higher are standard. The London Underground, Mexico City Metro, and Tokyo subway all average 1.2-1.3 km between stations; most lines in Beijing and Shanghai have similar interstations, but a few are run suburban train-style and have longer station spacing. Moscow Metro averages 1.7 km, with buses taking people from their homes to the nearest station.

In fact, the only major metro systems with average interstations under 1.2 km - those in Paris, New York, and Seoul (where the average is 1 km) - have express trains to speed things up. In New York and to some extent Seoul, some of the subway lines are four-tracked, with local and express service, while in Paris the RER functions as an express train system.

[rhywun]

Argh! Bus stop spacing in NYC (and in general, all over America) is one of my biggest pet peeves. Because every stop is a huge drain on time--especially when, as is typical in the United States, passengers must enter the front of the vehicle and pay upon boarding. I was astonished to discover near me in Brooklyn a while ago, two bus stops *on the same block*. And this isn't one of those super-long blocks; it's actually a shorter-than-usual distance between two avenues, 6th and 7th Avenues in Bay Ridge. The distance appears a little over 400 feet on Google Maps. I've heard this sort of thing justified by attempts at portraying the bus system as largely serving the needs of old people.

Well... I've lived in Germany, a country that has a similarly large percentage of seniors as the United States. And I just measured the distance between the stop I lived at and the next stop over. It was over 2,000 feet--and down a steep hill. And this in a densely-populated village--"urban" by American standards. Now the service wasn't "great"--every 20 minutes all day--but of course it was punctual and highly dependable. And as a matter of fact, the bus lines in my Brooklyn neighborhood are not patronized by seniors to any higher extent than those I recall from my time in Germany.

Thus, I've come to believe that the issue of stop spacing is largely cultural. Germans are famously known for being fond of punctuality, while Americans are probably more known for placing emphasis on "convenience". I think this explains the different attitudes toward bus stop spacing in the two countries. BTW, as a consequence of all this, I've noticed that German maps tend to display the name of every bus stop--which would be ridiculously impractical in any American town.

[John]

How does the average speed of service in Sydney compare to other places, such as San Francisco? I felt like service in Sydney was noticeably faster. It was nice.

[Brisben]

How do planners go about deciding what the "optimal" spacing for a bus stop is?

[Louis]

This is what happens when streetcar spacing gets out of control: in New Orleans, the St Charles Streetcar has stop spacing of 634 feet, and the Canal Streetcar has stop spacing of 645 feet. This is for median-running streetcars.

But you have to see the map to understand how slow the service must be: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=29.955381,-90.091152&spn=0.068267,0.168056&t=h&z=13&msid=101545058543449879995.00048dfd471466e3f99ca

[Dave]

That's less than 200m per stop! You could probably walk faster... although the services look as much tourist oriented as commuter/transit oriented, so it probably doesn't cripple the service completely.