Human Transit

to save time is to lengthen life

That was the slogan of this 1912 advertisement for the first segment of subway rapid transit to open in the Boston area, the Cambridge segment of the Red Line.  Thanks to the TRB History Committee.  

Yes, I know that slow, fun transit is supposed to make us enjoy the ride more, and the ride is part of life.  But if you're not riding for fun, wouldn't you rather get where you're going?

that second on-board employee

A reader asks:

 

My question relates to the relationship between frequency and capacity.  In Boston on the MBTA ... for many of the trains, there are 2 employees running the train.  On the Green line, trains are 2 cars long, with a driver in the first, and in the second an operator responsible for opening and closing doors and making sure no one gets on without paying.  For the other lines, the 2nd operator only has to open and close doors because you need to pay to get into the stations.

 

To me, it seems like a waste to have to pay a second individual to open and close the doors.  Outside of the highest frequency travel times, and even possibly during those, wouldn't it be better for travelers to have service twice as often even at half the capacity?  Outside of the truly busy travel times, trains rarely run anywhere near capacity.  Especially on weekends and in the evening, trains are never full but the less frequent service does not encourage those spontaneous transit trips that are so vital to urban life.

 

This is not my core expertise, but my understanding is that generally this is right:  the second employee is usually a holdover from days when fare collection and monitoring of doors had to be done manually.  The job often survives because it's coded into labor contracts and sometimes also into regulations.

I am unaware of anything that non-driving on-board employees do that would be utterly impractical to automate today, the best evidence for which is that trams, streetcars, light rail, and heavy rail can be found operating with a single employee all over the world.   (Fully grade separated heavy rail, of course, can also be run with zero on-board employees, liberating the agency to operate intense frequency even late in the evening.)  Fare collection is increasingly handled by Proof of Payment systems which feature roving fare inspectors.  While these fare inspectors have a cost, their number is not directly related to the number of vehicles in service, so they are not such a direct barrier to increases in service. 

Frequency is driven by staffing requirements rather than vehicles, so the number of employees on board is the dominant variable determining how frequently any line can be run.  Only during the peak commute period is the availability of vehicles a significant element of the frequency decision.

As you would expect, however, any local debate about turning second employees into drivers of additional service will be fraught.  It is very easy for opponents (usually including the unions) to make generalized allegations about safety and security because most people feel safer and more secure if there's an employee nearby.  So it's politically hard to do.

This is one of those issues that is intensely local, and where examples of experience from other cities just have trouble penetrating a local debate.  It happens even in Europe.  See for example the peculiar fare-collector job that exists on Amsterdam trams.  A little cubicle placed at the middle of each tram contains an employee who serves as a cashier, selling tickets.  Boarding and circulation on Amsterdam trams is awkward, and effective capacity much reduced, because you're required to board only at certain doors and exit at certain others.

This second employee on Amsterdam trams is, as near as I can tell, unique in Europe; everywhere else trams run with one employee (the driver) and roving fare inspection.  Get a European transit professional going on how bizarre this Amsterdam practice is.  It's great fun over a beer.  But they can also explain, politically, why it will probably never change. 

If readers know of recent stories where second employees have been successfully removed and retrained as drivers, thus allowing more service, please post a link in the comments.

boston: the "rapid transit and key bus routes" map

As several commenters have mentioned lately, Boston's transit agency recently published a new network overview map, part of an overhaul of the information system.   The new map is similar in function to a subway network map but with some key bus lines added.  Here's a slice, but you can get the whole thing, in much better resolution, here.

Most large transit agencies with extensive rail transit publish a map of just the rail transit services.  These tend to be the fastest, most frequent, and highest-capacity services in the network, so it makes sense that if you zoom out to a full-system overview, these are what you should see. 

But when you look at the map asking a specific question -- "so how would I get from A to B? -- a standard rail transit map may not give you the answer, especially if you're outside the core.  Most mature rail transit networks have a core area where many lines cross, forming a lattice of lines that can be used to get from almost any station to any other.  Think London inside the Circle Line loop, or Lower Manhattan, or most of the city of Paris.  But further out, the rail transit map presents single lines radiating outward from the city.  To travel between two outer stations on different lines, the subway may not be the fastest route, because it will require you to go into the urban core and back.

In a smaller network like Boston's, there's only a small area downtown where many subway lines interconnect.  Most of the network is formed by radial lines extending outward from downtown.  So many, many trips between rail stations are not logically routed via the rail network.   If you want to go, for example, from Harvard on the Red Line to Harvard Avenue station on the Green Line, you don't want the Red Line or the Green Line, you want bus line 66.  And while the 66 isn't as frequent as a subway (its midday frequency is 16 minutes, which usually means it used to be 15) it's still going to get you there sooner than taking the subway into downtown Boston and back out.

I don't know the intentions behind the selection of "key bus routes," but that's the best sense I can make of it.  And as such, it makes good sense.  As always, I would prefer to see a Frequent Network map, where the appearance of a line guaranteed high frequency, but such a map would probably be much more crowded in the core of Boston, and less suited to getting a zoomed-out picture of the whole network.

(And yes, the map's representation of the Silver Line, in the southeast part of this slice, makes me a little seasick.  It seems to be saying that the Silver Line - Green Line connection, at Boylston, works in only one direction.  In fact, the Silver Line [a Bus Rapid Transit service] is really four lines, and the apparent figure-eight is two of them overlapping.  But there's no way I'd know that from this map.)