Graphic from DVRPC's study Speeding up SEPTA (2008)
Aug. 18
By Anthony Campisi
For PlanPhilly
SEPTA bus riders may be seeing faster rides along city routes over the next year.
The Nutter administration plans to convene a Transit First panel that will tackle slow bus travel times and aim at reducing congestion along commercial corridors, according to Andrew Stober, director of strategic initiatives in the mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities.
Stober said that the administration is in talks with SEPTA and city and state agencies like the Streets Department, Parking Authority and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to convene the committee in October.
The goal of the panel will be to “identify where the opportunities exist to improve travel times,” Stober said, adding that “the city is going to be working with SEPTA in the next year to closely look at new routes.”
The Transit First panel will select routes and commercial corridors throughout the city where changes such as consolidating bus stops and introducing limited-stop bus service would cut down passenger travel times.
Philadelphia’s current bus and trolley network leans more toward providing riders with the convenience of frequent stops over providing reliable and fast service, Stober said, adding that the Transit First panel will try to better balance those competing interests.
Any successful effort at increasing bus and trolley travel time could yield big dividends for both SEPTA and riders. The faster buses and trolleys travel along their routes, the fewer vehicles SEPTA will need running at any one time in order to provide the same level of service.
A report released last year by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission calculated that it cost SEPTA $142,900 to operate a peak-hour bus and $279,200 to operate a peak-hour trolley.
The effect of even small increases in vehicle speed would be significant. The same report, titled Speeding Up SEPTA, calculated that an increase of only 1 mph in City Transit Division bus service “would yield roughly $13 million in annual savings” for the agency.
And clocking in at a little above 10 mph, SEPTA buses are the third-slowest on average among major transit agencies surveyed by the DVRPC. (The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority came in last at an average below 8 mph, in part because of the dense urban areas it serves.)
One way of speeding up service that the Transit First panel will be considering is bus stop consolidation. National guidelines call for bus stops to be placed about a quarter-mile apart in urban areas to minimize travel time while still retaining accessible service.
In many Philadelphia neighborhoods, including Center City and surrounding areas, buses stop at every corner along their routes.
Though this effectively provides door-to-door service for many Philadelphians, it also has the effect of lengthening travel time. A stop consolidation project in Los Angeles cited by the DVRPC found that a 71.4-percent reduction in bus stops along a bus route led to a 9.25-percent reduction in running time.
The Center City District, in a report released last year entitled Managing Success in Center City (http://www.centercityphila.org/docs/2008CCDcongestion.pdf) called on SEPTA to study placing bus stops on every other corner in Center City as a way of speeding up bus service to provide travelers “a significantly faster cross-town alternative” to other means of transportation.
Ahmed El-Geneidy, a professor at the McGill School of Urban Planning who studies bus stop spacing, explained that every bus stop placed along a route increases total travel time by about 5 to 10 seconds — even when no passengers are present. Bus drivers who have to prepare to pick up passengers at a stop are kept from accelerating as much as they could.
“Stopping at every single block is wrong,” he said.
However, to get the most out of stop consolidation, SEPTA will have to remove stops that riders use. The goal of stop removal, El-Geneidy said, is to consolidate riders who are spread out along bus and trolley routes and concentrate them at fewer stops with higher use.
Though it may be difficult to convince riders to give up the convenience of stops on every block, agencies that have succeeded in consolidation have reported high levels of customer satisfaction.
In fact, customers report greater travel-time savings than consolidation actually provides. In a paper currently under peer review, El-Geneidy found that riders in Montreal “felt savings up to 10 minutes for trips even though their savings were a minute and a half.”
At the same time, transit agencies have to be flexible in their consolidation efforts, El-Geneidy said. Elderly and disabled ridership patterns have to be taken into account so that stops and areas frequented by people who have trouble walking long distances won’t be affected.
The most difficult problem to solve when it comes to measures like stop consolidation, he said, is political. Riders and businesses frequently protest the perceived inconvenience of having fewer stops.
David Hull, a service planning supervisor at the King County Metro in Seattle, agrees. His agency has undertaken bus consolidation along several routes and has had to face down community opposition.
“A lot of people take removing stops as a take-away,” he said.
Though stop consolidation, when done right, doesn’t need to affect many riders, it’s often difficult for transit agencies to convey this fact, Hull said. Those who feel slighted by the proposed changes are usually more effective at mobilizing than transit riders who will see their travel time go down.
As a way of dealing with public concerns in a single stroke, the King County Metro is considering a system-wide stop consolidation process to replace the more scattered efforts that have taken place in recent years. As part of that, Hull said the agency is considering instituting a formal appeals process to allow riders who disagree with any changes a space to air their grievances.
The Transit First committee won’t be the first such effort to improve service by the city and SEPTA.
The city’s first Transit First project was completed in 2006 along the Route 52 bus. It discontinued two stops and moved 27 others to the far sides of their intersections.
Moving bus stops to the other side of intersections, while not “a silver bullet” for decreasing trip time, according to Stober, allows buses to accelerate and decelerate more efficiently. The DVRPC said that moving the 27 stops resulted in total time savings of more than 5 minutes.
Contact the reporter at campisi.anthony@gmail.com
Comments
When SEPTA implements smart cards, and cell phones with RFID tags, and other contactless payment methods, bus travel time will decrease. In suburban Maryland where I live, bus travel time has improved now that most riders use Smartpass. I they chose to pay with bills and coins, they are charge a bit more. Boarding time has improved because there is less fumbling around looking for exact change.
I've been riding SEPTA/PTC since my parents and grandparents took me to Willow Grove Park on the open-air trolleys with the wooden seats back in the 1940s. I've never had a problem with public transportation in Philly in all the years and the many, many miles I've ridden, but whenever I hear of proposed changes, I'm concerned.
Here's a communcation I had with SEPTA customer service concerning a previous proposed change in "fare instruments"...
This is my response to SEPTA's response to my concerns about the elimination of transfers:
Dear Mr. Hepkins,
Please forgive me for taking so long to respond, but your reply is long and contains many comments that concern me. Here I use a preceding arrow for each portion of yours that I've quoted.
---------------------------------------
> First let me state that there is much misinformation and confusion within the public domain concerning this subject that has become a knee-jerk emotional issue, which makes it seem that SEPTA is double and triple-charging customers full fares with the elimination of transfers. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Can you explain how customers will not be double and triple charged?
> The first major fact is that SEPTA is virtually the last major transit authority in North America that still uses paper transfers.
What does "major transit authority" mean"? What does "virtually the last" mean?
Can and will you give me a list of those transit authorities that you consider "major" who do still use paper transfers and a list of those who don't?
Can and will you tell me what have replaced paper transfers in those transit authorities who no longer use them?
> It is an antiquated, 1950's vintage mode of travel. Most transit authorities have eliminated transfers years ago - due to the fact that they are inconvenient for customers, opens up more fare disputes (as they must be used within a short time frame), easily gets lost and is easy to counterfeit, but hard to store and manage.
This section provides no useful information in regards to my concerns. If the transfer system is not replaced with another system which is at least as fair, it doesn't matter whether the old system is antiquated, inconvenient, hard to store and manage for SEPTA, or has been eliminated elsewhere.
> We encourage pre-paid fare instruments...
The phrase "fare instruments" reminds me of double-speak; like saying "land fill" instead of "dump".
> ...such as tokens...
I don't see how tokens without transfers would not mean one would have to pay a double fare if they took one bus to another bus, or triple fares if they needed another bus at the far end of their journey.
> ...and transpasses, which provides unlimited rides on a weekly or monthly basis
These would (and already do) eliminate the need for transfers, but do no good for those who would use a token or pay a cash fare, with transfer (which I believe is already more than significantly high enough to pay for it's trouble and inconvenience to SEPTA).
> Almost 90% of our riders use these pre-paid fare instruments that largely discounts each ride.
That means 10% don't.
> For example, if someone has a two fare ride without transfers, at the current token rate of $1.45 per, this would amount to 2.90 a ride. $2.00 plus a transfer at .60 cents would virtually be the same as the base cash fare plus the transfer fee. In a three way ride without transfers, then at 1.45 per token times three would be $4.35
Am I correct that a fare for a three vehicle ride, and back, with tokens and paper transfers, currently costing $1.45 for the token and $0.60 for each transfer for a total of $2.65; with the ride back, $5.30? If I am, is it also correct that paying with a token for each of the three vehicles and then again on the way back would cost 6 x ($1.45) totaling $8.70, and that would be $3.40 more than at current rates?
> At that rate, the best option would be a transpass if the customer is making a daily commute.
"...if the customer is making a daily commute" is a big "if". If 90% of your riders use such "fare instruments", that means 10% don't. That must be a fairly large number of people and contain many of those people who have no need for a transpass, which not only wouldn't at all be a financial bargain for them but rather an enormous unnecessary expense.
> A weekly transpass currently cost $20.75. This also provides "unlimited rides" so that the customer can ride several times a day
I imagine that there may be a significant number of customers in that 10% who have no need for unlimited rides; who have no call to ride several times a day, but do have occasions to visit a friend, family member, or provider of a professional service where they'd have to pay another buck-seventy without the transfers.
> ...and the monthly rate is 78.00 which provides even much deeper savings
For those who have call to ride often enough to get those savings.
> With the recent price of gas averaging $4.00 dollars a gallon (and trending upward), this is an even bigger bargain
For those who have call to ride often enough to get those savings, and I imagine that a significant number of those in that 10% might not have cars anyway.
> as the cost of living has gone up from transportation costs to groceries while the cost of riding SEPTA has remained constant throughout this economic downturn.
I see evidence that this current economic downturn has been an economic windfall for SEPTA.
> ...even with our current system, it certainly is not as bad as advertised as the simple fact is that most people have found that it is more economical to use transpasses and tokens than hard currency (as only 11% of current riders use cash fare).
That's because one cash fare is 55 cents (almost 40%) more than a token, and I believe that when I see someone pay cash, that it's because they rarely ride and don't know, have to get somewhere quickly and forgot or didn't have time to get tokens, or have more money than inclination to figure out the most economical way to get where they're going.
> ...there is a good reason why it has been eliminated virtually every where else in the modernized world but at SEPTA. And that is, there are better, more modern and economical alternatives (for the customer as well as the service provider).
I intend to try to do what I can, when given the opportunity, that the economical alternatives are at least as good for the customer as they are for SEPTA.
Please forgive me for anything here that I've made hard to understand. My hopes and prayers are with and for us all, and I thank you and everyone else at SEPTA who is trying to do the best for all with wisdom and understanding.
...thanks again...
. . . Dan Homan
> -----Original Message-----
> From: danhoman@safeplace.net [mailto:danhoman@safeplace.net]
> Sent: Friday, May 23, 2008 4:15 PM
> To: cservice
> Cc: danhoman@safeplace.net
> Subject: don't eliminate transfers, make them free
>
> Dear friends,
>
> ...I've been wondering again,
> lately, if SEPTA's still trying to eliminate transfers.
>
> Not only do I strongly oppose the elimination of transfers, I also,
> even more strongly, favor free transfers; even if it's necessary to raise fares.
>
> When I wrote before about my concerns, the customer service
> department sent me this curt reply: "SEPTA still believes in the fundamental fairness of its proposal and remains committed to our goal of eliminating paper transfers." (Barry Berky - SEPTA Customer Service)
>
> Many working people use SEPTA to travel far out of the city to reach
> their jobs. A lot of their money is eaten up paying just to get to work. I
> can't believe SEPTA thinks it would be fair to have these people pay double
> or even triple fares, or more, rather than continue the use of transfers.
>
> I don't understand how anyone could believe this is fair. I live in
> a neighborhood that's close enough to the "el" to walk to the station, but many of those who are older and/or disabled can't walk even those few blocks. For them and those who live even further down the road, they'd have
> to choke up a double fare, and they'd have to choke up a triple fare if they
> also needed a transfer at the other end of their journey!
>
> For me, and I'm sure for many of us who live in such neighborhoods,
> it'd take a lot more than just saying "SEPTA still believes in the fundamental fairness of its proposal" to convince us that it's fair.
>
> Thank you for considering my concern...
>
> . . . Dan Homan
>
> P.S. Recently turning 65, this issue has become academic to me! :) If you'd ask whether I'd be willing for that age to be raised, my personal answer is yes.
-----------
>
> Carl D (Dan) Homan Jr
> 5219 Marlowe Street
> Philadelphia, PA 19124-1329
> 215-743-7531