Who would want their most convenient bus stop eliminated? No one. However, after boarding every stop lengthens the trip for anyone not boarding or getting off. And everyone wants a faster tip. Unfortunately, the goals of stop convenience and bus speed are in conflict. The Port Authority has been working to strike a better balance through their stop consolidation program.
This program has attracted some controversy. The Post Gazette ran a recent editorial criticizing the bus stop consolidation process being pursued by the Port Authority. In particular, they criticized the Port Authority for considering elimination of the stop at Millvale and Penn Avenue, arguing the stop is heavily used.
The Millvale and Penn stop is only 404 ft from a nearby stop at Penn and Mathilda. The Port Authority’s bus stop guidelines specify 650 ft minimum and 900 ft optimum spacing for a local route. The 88 bus which serves these stops is considered a local route.
Contrary to the Post Gazette’s editorial, the Port Authority’s stop consolidation program does not go far enough. It takes time for a bus to come to a stop and accelerate again, and when bus stops are spaced closely together this delay exceeds the reduction in walking time. Transit analyst Alon Levy wrote a blog post in which he calculates the optimal spacing for minimizing trip time. He calculates the optimum spacing to be 536 m (1,758 ft). This is slightly further than the 400 m (1312 ft) to 500 m (1640 ft) that is standard in bus systems in Europe, Australia, and East Asia. These systems typically get much higher ridership than bus systems in the United States.
The analysis assumes that there is pedestrian infrastructure in place to safely walk between bus stops. This is the case at the stops at Mathilda and Millvale. However many other Port Authority stops lack good sidewalks. The Port Authority should consider this and advocate for better pedestrian infrastructure as it proceeds with its consolidation process.
The Port Authority publishes ridership data for each stop on a system map. For the inbound stop at Millvale street proposed for elimination, there were 45 daily boardings, compared with only 23 at Mathilda. So it may be that the Port Authority is removing the wrong stop, but it is clear that one of these stops should be eliminated.
Soliciting community engagement on stop consolidation is challenging. Most riders will want to keep their own stop even if eliminating it will benefit the system as a whole. On the other hand the following stakeholders benefit from stop elimination:
- Anyone on the route whose stop was not eliminated.
- Provided enough other stops are eliminated, some riders whose stop was eliminated will benefit from the overall reduction in travel time.
- Potential riders who would ride the bus if it were faster.
- Taxpayers who fund transit and don’t ride the bus, but would benefit from the improved safety, reduced congestion and reduced pollution from increased ridership.
The riders and potential riders who would benefit from the elimination are less likely to speak up than someone about to lose their stop.
I have sympathy for people who lose their stop. The stop closest to my house is only 1080 ft from another that is much more heavily used. I would be sad to see my stop eliminated, but it would be worth it if the overall bus speeds were significantly improved.
Engaging the community for feedback has the potential to identify helpful information. However the Port Authority should be aware of reporting biases and proceed with consolidating stops.
How many buses does Pittsburgh have for its network? My data is trained on Brooklyn, and sparser networks should have (slightly) more widely-spaced stops because if there are fewer buses circulating then the wait time is longer and so the faster-buses-come-more-often effect grows in importance.
The 88 bus that was the focus of my post has 92 stops with an average spacing of 655 ft, so approximately 11.4 miles total, and the route is entirely within the city of Pittsburgh, a city with a 58 square mile area.
Our transit system is owned by and serves the whole 745 sq mi county, which includes the surrounding suburbs. The countywide system had 6856.
They are going through the routes two at a time and consolidating stops. They are eliminating 20 stops from the 88 route to bring the number of stops to 70 and an 860 ft average stop spacing. They decided to keep the Millvale and Penn stop that my blog post focused on.
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2020/02/20/Elimination-bus-stops-Port-Authority-finalized-88-Penn-48-Arlington-routes/stories/202002200113
To answer your question on the number of buses, the entire bus fleet is 741 buses.
The 88 bus stops 56 times a day in each direction on weekdays over a 20 hour service period.