Transit times

This is Joseph.

This tweet by Matthew Yglesias is getting at something that I think is really underrated in transit policy:

I have lived large chunks of my life without a car and it is amazing how much buffer room you need for a bus system. Not only are buses slow, because of many stops, but if a bus does not come it is an actual disaster if you have things scheduled first thing in the morning. I am especially cranky about daycare timing, as the hours of daycare are tight compared to the workday and no daycare is just going to shrug about a 30 minute late pickup. If we put daycares at worksites and made it a requirement that there be spaces for employees that would be different, but that's not even a policy dream.

This is why I find light rail train/metro/subway systems so superior. Not only are the trains generally more reliable but they come at high frequency to well spaced out stops, without being involved in traffic jams. One can plan much more effectively for a transit plan with this setup.

Plus, life really does have things that are hard to be late to. When I teach first thing in the morning then it means busing in would need to be extremely early to account for the bus not coming. A retail clerk needs to be there to open the store. A physician needs to be there at the time of the scheduled procedure. You can build this time in but the inefficiency is dramatic with 1/2 hour routes. It means you need to account for longer travel time and plan for at least one bus not to come in order to be on time. 

For example, right now, it takes 18 minutes to drive to the University of Manitoba (about 7 km but going through some badly planned chokepoints). Here are a few transit routes:

The 78 is a rare ten minute bus, making it kind of ok. But with a buffer for missing and the time to crawl over the snow (sidewalk clearing is a lost art), it is going to take an hour to get the University. 

Going to the medical campus is even worse, it is a 12 minute drive (7 km) and the same by bus but it requires a transfer, which is another point of failure:

Add in another 20 minutes for "missing an infrequent bus" (the 12 is an every half hour bus) and it immediately becomes clear why transit is a poor solution (remember the optimistic one hour is EACH WAY). In a mid-size city. 

Now a fit person could probably walk it in a hour and a half (I am always slower than the projections on google and uncleared sidewalks slow you enormously) but at -20C/-4F (a typical winter day) there is no way I am doing that. But it is remarkable how badly the transit environment can be, in a Canadian city with both sides being near major transit points. 

If we want to handle car culture then we really need to grapple with the current level of efficiency in public transit, which is low. Now if you have a seat then maybe you can read, but it is remarkable how hard it is to do that in a crowded bus, where you might also be standing.