Human Transit

singapore: bbc profiles new frontiers in transit denial

This just in from the BBC:  Technology giant Philips corporation sent some people to the extremely busy Singapore bus system to imagine an alternative to typical fixed-route bus service.  The researchers' definition of the problem:

We discussed the benefits and limitations of the fixed-route system – it's clear such a system provided consistency in time and place (to get on and off), and to a certain extent convenience, but not completely. Flexibility is not what a fixed-route and fixed-time bus service system can offer. We have all experienced times when the bus is very empty or extremely packed, which means efficiency is best optimised at the bus-route level, but not individual bus level, since that bus is unable to respond to dynamic demand and traffic situations immediately. We all have all been in situations when there are only a few passengers in the bus and yet, the bus still has to plough through the entire fixed route, picking up no passengers along the way. The motivation was how to optimise the bus service by allowing the passengers and bus drivers to respond immediately to dynamic demand and traffic situations, not unlike a taxi that you can flag anywhere, anytime, and it will take you directly to your destination.

Needless to say, they came up with a massively all-demand-reponsive system identical to the one promoted last year by Gensler Associates, to which I responded (perhaps too colorfully) here. The idea is that now that you have a smartphone, the transit line should twist and turn to meet chase everyone's speciic need and that somehow this will be more efficient.  As I said in response to Gensler, there's little to fear from this dystopian vision beause it's mathematically impossible.  

In a place as crowded as Singapore, well-designed scheduled fixed routes are not just efficient but liberating.  They're efficient on a large scale despite routine under- and overcrowding because they follow straight paths that thousands of people find useful at the same time.  They're efficient because people gather at major stops where they board and alight in large numbers that are impossible in any demand-responsive form.  Frequent fixed routes are liberating because they're there for you when you need them, just as subways are, so that you don't have to wonder whether some automated system will approve your request for transport.  

The all-demand-responsive vision can mean one of two things:  (1) large buses that carry large numbers of people on complex variable routes, changing its route in response to every beep of desire from each of 5 million phones, or (2) fleets of very small vehicles each serving a few people on a more direct path.  Vision (1) is a hellishly circuitous system to ride any distance on, while (2) is a vision of vastly more wasteful use of urban space,  as people who are now carried in a space-efficient way are converted to a space-wasteful one.  Vision (2) also requires either driverless technology or extremely cheap labor, which is why it only happens at scale in low-wage developing countries.

No, Singapore has built its success on subways, and is developing fixed, infrastructural bus lines that work more like subways.

Please don't call yourself a transit visionary until you've grappled with the facts and possibilities of transit network design, by reading a book, say, or taking a course!

the photo that explains almost everything (updated!)

You've seen photos like this. A large group of people, with images comparing the amount of precious urban space they take depending on the mode of transport they use.  This new one is by Australia's Cycling Promotion Fund.

This photo makes at least three important points, two of them probably not intended.  In this one image you can see that:

• Bike racks on buses (and most other transit) can never be more than a niche market. 

The rack on the bus in pic #1 carries two bikes, which is great for those two people.  But if all the bikes in pic #2 try to get onto the bus in pic #1, we have a geometric impossibility.  Bike racks are already as large as they can be if the driver is still to be far enough forward to drive safely.  A non-folding bike inside a transit vehicle takes the space of several passengers, so could fairly be accommodated only at several times the fare.  In the ideal sustainable future, you will have to park your bike at the station, or return your rental bike, just as Europeans do.  If transit does accommodate your bike, you really should pay a fare premium that reflects the rough number of passenger spaces displaced, or the supply/demand ratio for 2-3 bike racks vs 20 people wanting to use them.

• "Personal Rapid Transit," or small demand-responsive buses, or driverless cars that work like taxis, will never, ever, ever substitute for surface transit in high-demand urban settings, such as where all these people want to travel. 

 Dreamers along these lines may well be right about many suburban areas, where demand is sparse and the land use pattern precludes efficient transit.  But when all the people in this picture want to travel, driverless cars may take less space than the cars shown here, but they will still take far more space than a bus would.  The scarcity of space per person is part of the very definition of a city, as distinct from suburbia or rural area, so the efficiency with which transport options use that space will always be the paramount issue.  

(Of course, this very thought experiment presumes that we will actually achieve, and culturally accept, driverless cars that require very little space between them, in which the prevention of ghastly accidents -- especially with pedestrians and bikes who may appear with zero warning and minimal stopping distance -- is achieved through the absolute infallibility of human-designed hardware and software.)

To make the same point more generally:

• In cities, urban space is the ultimate currency.  

We spend too much time talking about what things cost in dollars and not enough about what they cost in space.  That, of course, is because urban space is perversely priced to encourage inefficient uses of it and discourage efficient ones.  If you're going to claim to be able to visualize how technology will change the world of 2040 -- as the techno-futurists claim to do -- you should also visualize what a political system ruled by people now under 40 would look like.  These people are much less emotionally attached to cars, care about environmental outcomes much more, and value urban space much more than their parents do.  Given that the revolution in urban pricing has already begun (see the London and Singapore congestion charges, and the San Francisco and Auckland dynamic parking systems), isn't it foolish to assume that today's assumptions about how we apportion urban space will still rule your techno-utopia?

UPDATE:  A reader points out one other key point, which is that

• the photo understates the space requirements of bikes compared to the other two.  

Once you put these three systems in motion, the cars and bus will need more space in one dimension -- forward and back.  However, in motion, the mass of bikes will expand in two dimensions, it will need to be both longer and wider for all the bikes to move safely.  This could have been rectified in the photo by consciously spacing the bikes to a distance where riders would feel comfortable at a brisk cycling speed that ensures not only stopping distance but also space for passing.  Masses of cyclists on a recreational ride may all agree to ride in tight formation at the same speed, but in daily life cycling infrastructure must accommodate the the fact that people in a cycling crowd will have different desires and intentions around speed, which affects lateral spacing and stopping distance.

singapore: transfer penalty eliminated, complaints predictable

Singapore's weekend Straits Times was full of debate about the recent fare system changes, which finally eliminated fare penalties for connecting from one service to another. 

Eliminating these penalties is a crucial step in creating an integrated and versatile transit network, because (a) networks designed around connections are more legible and frequent than those that aren't and (b) transferring is already enough of a hassle without these penalties.  The new system means that your fare from A to B will now be the same regardless of the path you take and the number of times you transfer.  This, in turn, will allow the transit agency to design a simpler and more reliable system.

To take just one example, many bus lines duplicate MRT rapid transit corridors, partly because fare penalities for transferring encouraged riders to stay on these buses instead of change to the MRT.  This was always silly from the transit agency's standpoint.  Remember:  To get a rider to her destination sooner is not just good for the rider.  It's good for the transit agency, too, because the operatings costs of transit are measured mostly in time, so a faster trip uses less of it. 

However, like many (but not all) great ideas, eliminating these penalties isn't free.   When you eliminate a fare penalty that is bringing in a certain amount of revenue, you have two choices: increase the base fare -- which is a direct fare increase for people who aren't transferring -- or accept a drop in revenue.  Singapore's transit agency did a little of both, and therefore got attacked from both sides.  The new fare system has been running for a couple of months now, and inevitable complaints about the fare increase (on passengers who didn't transfer) are in full swing.

I'm impressed with the Straits Times coverage of this issue -- to which I'd link generously if it weren't behind a paywall.  The reporter actually understood the financial reality underlying the choice and explained why other choices might have been worse. The prevailing critique of the transit agency was not that they did it, but that they oversold the change as a fare cut.  In fact, it was a cut if you were already transferring and an increase if you weren't, and they probably could have been clearer about that.

Still, this is a good move.  Singapore is in the early stage of rationalising its huge but confusing bus system, and this was an essential step toward making that possible.  When New York City eliminated bus-subway connection penalities in 1996, the result was a small jump in subway ridership and a huge jump in bus ridership.  I'll be interested in seeing Singapore's results.

singapore: mysterious, providential buses

[Slightly revised 22 August '10 to eliminate some innocent mistakes.  The overall naive tone of this post was intentional; this was, after all, my first full day in Singapore, so I was seeing as one sees when first trying to figure out a network.]

My first transit adventure in Singapore began in at the remote wetland reserve, Sungei Buloh, in the northwest of the island.  It's adjacent to a curious area called the "Kranji Countryside," billed as Singapore's "homegrown agritainment hub."  It's a small patch of farmlands and vineyards designed to serve all the agrarian tourism needs for the 5 million people living just down the road.  

When I was ready to leave, I was directed to a bus stop out on the road, which looked clear enough.  Note the practice of identifying the stop location on the sign, a nice subliminal gesture that says "we, your gigantic transit system, actually know where you are." (Click photo to enlarge, as always.)

 

(Yes, I know how to straighten crooked photos.  This is the actual lean of the sign!)

In this clean and clear sign is a lot of information.  Above the location name is a unique number, 49209, that one can presumably use to summon real-time information by mobile phone.  Below that is a new display about the new fare system (more on that here), and below that is a sleeve containing the current timetable of the only route at this stop, the 925.  It's only about once an hour, but hey, this is the price of a "countryside" lifestyle.

A lot of people had assembled for the hourly apparition of the 925, but right at the time that the 925 was due, something else showed up.

Kranji Express, according to the paint on the bus, but there's also an electric sign in the front window, helpfully adding: "Kranji Express."

Everyone got on this bus, as though it was what they were waiting for, so I did too.

The web address on the bus is www.kranjicountryside.com, so perhaps this bus is part of the Kranji Countryside offering.  It was air conditioned (Singapore has separate fare structures for air conditioned vs non-air-conditioned buses) but nothing fancy beyond that; it would not have looked out of place in India.  It had the standard Land Transport Authority card reader, and a very old cash farebox.

Once on the bus, I assumed that this was one of those privately operated services that is called 925 for the Transport Authority's purposes, but before long I saw a 925 going the other direction, and it was a standard Singapore bus.  We also seemed to be running nonstop, passing up people waiting at other 925 stops down the line.  So what is this thing, exactly?  A bus that has LTA equipment but seems to operate instead of, or perhaps just in front of, the advertised LTA service?  Was the funky vehicle supposed to be part of the "agritainment"?  (Curiously, one of our few stops was to loop through a "farm adventure" facility, presumably a place you can take your children to hug chickens.)  Such oddities happen when you're still in the process of getting government control over previously unregulated service, and when existing providers have objectives other than transport.

A similar confusion arose the next day as I considered transit options for going across the channel to Johor Bahru, Malaysia.  Inside MTR trains, an announcement approaching Marsaling station says that you should change there for buses to Malaysia, but when I looked for confirming information on the web, all indications were that these buses leave from the next station down the line, Kranji.  I didn't have time for the risks that this uncertainty presented, so I took a taxi.  There's a parable there.

singapore: a walk with paul barter

One of this blog's earliest fans was Paul Barter, a transport policy scholar based at the National University of Singapore.  Paul's blog, Reinventing Urban Transport, is always worth a look.

Paul and I met for dinner in Singapore last week, a long rambling evening that ended in an outdoor Islamic (no alcohol) cafe, where we watched the Germany vs. England World Cup game amid a crowd who all seemed to have surprisingly strong feelings for one side of the other.  (Perhaps, given colonial history, this boiled down to strong feelings for or against the British.)  We started with a walking tour of a Singapore that most tourists won't see, but that covers a huge percentage of the island: the regular, repetitive, but efficient world of the Housing Development Board, the single government agency that provides housing for a majority of Singaporeans.

Paul told me to meet him at Ang Mo Kio station on Singapore's rail rapid transit network, the MRT:

 

Most of the rail rapid transit is elevated outside the CBD, so this is a typical station environment, constrained in its urban potential by the overhead structure.  Note the solid mass of bicycles chained to the fence in the distance. 

Singapore is still debating the role of the bicycle.  Paul tells me that cycling on pedestrian paths is illegal but tolerated, while riding in the street is legal but looks, to me, pretty scary.  When Paul and others suggest ways to make cycling safer, they get responses along the lines of:  "Cycling will never be popular in Singapore; it's just too hot and humid."  There's an odd disconnect here, as the number of bicycles locked to railings at rapid transit stations indicates some demand, and this would seem to suggest some government interest in the safety of those people, regardless of whether bicycles are officially popular.  As for humidity, Brisbane shares Singapore's climate for half the year, and in the core parts of Brisbane where there is good cycling infrastructure, cycling volumes are intense.

Paul then led me to the bus interchange for Ang Mo Kio station, which is across the street from the rail station but connected by pedestrian underpass.  It's a standard enclosed facility with sliding doors that open only when a bus is there.  It's huge, bigger than the rail transit station, with a long chain of berths receding into the distance.

 

The interchange gives out onto a typical community commercial area.

 

Which leads, in turn, to truly vast quantities of this ...

 

The low building in front is a parking structure.  This high density has a surprising amount of parking given the transit options and the generally high cost of driving.  Paul said that the total number of cars is capped in Singapore, by requiring a permit to own a car and capping the number of permits.  Motoring costs are also relatively "unbundled."  Paul assured me that the parking for these housing blocks is never just lumped into the cost of housing, as it would be in North American or Austrlasian cities, but must be leased separately.

Still, it's a lot of parking, a lot of cars, and thus a lot of emphasis on big, fast streets:

 

Our walk took us under the viaduct of the MTR rail transit system, and while it's not Berlin's Stadtbahn, they have tried to make the space useful, as a skateboarding area among other things.

 

Considerable effort goes into providing completely weather protected pedestrian routes, an effect that produces a repeating pattern of small structures that are vaguely Chinese-looking in their composition:

 

 

These towers also have an equivalent of the small corner shop, usually on the ground floor.

These massed housing landscapes are likely to be distressing to a lot of Western eyes, reminiscent, perhaps, of European suburbs that are often considered slums.  So it's interesting to see the same architecture used to create a prosperous environment, with many touches that show a clear intention to make a humane and attractive place. 

In the end, I'm not Singaporean, so it doesn't much matter whether I like it.  The Housing Development Board is Singapore's housing provider not just for the poor but for much of the middle class.   Generations of many families have known no other form of housing.  It's home.  And it certainly packs the trains.

singapore: pedestrian first impressions

It's what I deserved, I suppose, for having written so much about how cul-de-sacs (at all scales, not just suburban) make attractive public transit impossible.  My hotel here, the Elizabeth, turns out to be at the uphill end of a 700m long cul-de-sac.  The entire thing is lined with 20-story buildings, mostly residential, that efficient public transit will never reach.  

From my hotel at the end of the cul-de-sac, I can see the end of another cul-de-sac that comes from the opposite direction.  To get there, you just climb over a green fence that has a little desultory barbed wire on top -- or sneak through a hotel's gate, if it's open.

The long walk up Mount Elizabeth Road from the nearest transit stop also offers some fine examples in the endless struggle between pedestrians, drainage, and trees.  (Cars, oddly enough, never seem endangered by these battles.)

Pretty much the same struggle that we see all over the developed world, except that there's a drainage channel on the left of these images, next to the white wall.  (Drainage is serious business in this monsoon-prone tropical city.  Just last week a single plugged drain caused the flooding of Orchard Road and the lower levels of high-end shopping centers there -- mostly food courts and the like.)

I'm curious to know if anybody in Singapore is even inventorying these pedestrian-vs-tree situations, and identifying obvious solutions to them -- such as, say, extend the sidewalk into the street, at the expense of a parking space.

Singapore is spectacular, safe, pleasant for the most part.  The density drives huge transit ridership, on both the sleek air-conditioned metro and buses.  More on all that soon.  

These odd lapses in pedestrian infrastructure are nothing like the challenges pedestrians face in developing-world countries like India, where they are often tracing a moving-front line between traffic lanes and roadside commerce.

But clearly, as in many cities of similar vintage, key parts of Singapore's density were built at a time when nobody was thinking of pedestrians -- a world-view that I struggle to grasp.  I find it easier to imagine life in ancient Greece or pre-contact Native America than life in 1970 as a planner who thinks we can build vast forests of towers everywhere, and still assume that everyone will drive cars.