It's been more than a year in the making, but Transit First is about to hit the streets of Philadelphia.
The city and SEPTA have chosen Route 47 to be the standard bearer for the project, which aims at improving transit speeds throughout the system.
SEPTA is one of the slowest transit systems when compared with its peers, and this pilot project ― which is slated to run for six months beginning April 18 ― is meant to change that.
Route 47, SEPTA's third-busiest surface route, is also one of its slowest, with an on-time performance of less than 75 percent.
And as anyone who rides the 47 during rush hour can attest, buses also bunch together and often become too crowded to even pick up riders.
The pilot program will focus on the southern portion of the route ― which stretches runs from Whitman Plaza in South Philadelphia to Olney ― where many of the problems occur.
About half of the stops south of Market Street will be removed, eliminating boarding time and allowing buses to travel faster ― though no stops adjacent to senior centers are being taken away.
Three bus stops will also be moved to the far side of intersections in the hope that fewer buses will get caught behind red lights while riders board.
To speed up boarding during rush hour, buses will allow riders with passes to board from the rear at 7th and Washington in the morning and at 8th and Market in the afternoon ― similar to what happens at the bus stop in front of the Municipal Services Building. SEPTA will have loaders on hand to check passes.
The Streets Department will alter garbage and recycling pickups to avoid peak hour traffic on 7th and 8th streets, where the route runs.
And to ensure that each bus is traveling as fast as it can ― rather than on a schedule ― buses will run on a headway system. They'll depart from Whitman Plaza every six minutes.
Taken together, the changes represent a way to hopefully improve service without spending much money, according to Andrew Stober, chief of staff for the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities, which is working with SEPTA on the Transit First initiative.
Originally, the city and SEPTA were looking at more expensive ways of speeding up buses, like installing a transit signal priority system, which would detect approaching buses and change traffic signals to allow them to get through intersections.
But tight budgets, affecting both the city and SEPTA, forced them to look at cheaper options, Stober said.
Route 47 was chosen, he said, to serve as “a model” for other north-south routes through Center City. Interventions that speed up service and prove popular may be extended to other bus routes.
To that end, there's an aggressive effort to see how the changes affect performance and customer attitudes.
The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission did a survey of the route last spring, sending out workers armed with GPS devices to ride buses and noting the cause of any delays. The city also conducted a customer survey of riders.
(Stober was surprised at how satisfied they seemed and thinks the results might be more an indication of learned helplessness than true happiness with the route.)
The same surveys will be conducted again during the pilot to measure progress. “We don't know how all these things will add up,” Stober said.
While that's true, hopes are high for noticeable improvements.
Michael Liberi, SEPTA's chief surface transportation officer, predicts the city and SEPTA will decide to make the pilot permanent before December. He thinks the lessons learned could also be applicable to east-west routes, like the 21 and 42, that have heavy ridership but poor on-time performance.
Greg Krykewycz, a DVRPC senior transportation planner who's worked on the Transit First project, also notes that moving to headway-based scheduling alone might result in noticeable improvements because it removes any “padding” from the previous schedule. Los Angeles' transit agency, for instance, saw as much improvements from moving to this type of scheduling as from adopting a transit-signal priority system.
Aware that previous Transit First efforts foundered when encountering political opposition, the city and SEPTA are making aggressive outreach efforts.
They won the support of City Councilman Frank DiCicco, whose district includes the South Philadelphia neighborhoods served by the route, and are in the process of visiting neighborhood association meetings to get the word out.
Wendy Green-Harvey, who's handling SEPTA's public outreach for the project, said the groups have so far been receptive to the changes.
(One Pennsport Civic Association (http://www.pennsportcivic.org/) board member told this reporter that the plan would be worth it if service is improved.)
SEPTA is also distributing flyers at businesses along the route and has started up a website (http://www.septa.org/service/bus/47pilot/index.html) to get the word out, Green-Harvey said.
Perhaps even more important than any service improvements, the pilot represents an attempt to turn around the historically antagonistic relationship that existed between the city and SEPTA.
All of the parties involved have stressed the importance of that new spirit of cooperation in getting the pilot program up and running.
It was “a real team effort,” Krykewycz said.
Contact the reporter at acampisi@planphilly.com
Comments
I want to thank SEPTA and MOTU for trying this. I am sure data will be kept to see how effective this pilot is which will help any future cost-benefit analysis required for signal prioritization and other more infrastructure intensive projects.
I think it's important to note that at its very worst this will cause some riders to walk or take their wheelchair an extra block. It's also important to note that disabled riders like to get to their destinations quickly as well. If this can do that and cause less time to be wasted by disabled users waiting at stops without any seating then it's a success.
It's probably worth pointing out that one of the reasons Transit First is getting tried out on the southern part of the route is that South Philly blocks are pretty small. The North Philadelphia section of the 47 has larger blocks. Even after the stop consolidation, the route will conform to SEPTA's service standards when it comes to stop spacing.
But stop consolidation has always been a politically tricky issue, so it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Bus stops in all other major cities are at least 2-3 blocks apart; Philadelphia is really behind the curve and this change is long overdue to make our transit system more efficient and streamlined. Public transit is not a door to door taxi service; people need to look at the world beyond themselves and see that this is a positive and necessary change that speeds up service, reduces travel time, and saves fuel and money. Passengers also have a role and responsibility to play in better service: have your fare ready when boarding, move all the way back to the rear of the bus, exit through the rear door, and don't block seats or doors.
The elimination of a schedule system in favor of regular departures seems sensible to me - particularly since SEPTA's schedules seem only to apply to when a vehicle begins its trip though I wonder if that would also apply to non-peak times. I assume buses would still not be leaving Whitman Plaza every six minutes at 11pm.
Also stop consolidation is a no-brainer. Even though, for their part, SEPTA seems to be very accommodating to community concerns about such things (I was highly impressed with how responsive they were during the reconstruction of the Market Street Elevated) the reality is that some folks are going to lose their reguarl boarding locations. Even in Center City, buses stop entirely too frequently - a problem that is especially pronounced during rush hour.
I've been a regular SEPTA rider for nearly 20 years and would rank scheduling a solid third on my list of issues that need immediate improvement (after cleanliness and customer service). Service patterns for many routes are at best sketchy. I've regularly ridden SEPTA routes through West, North and Southwest Philadelphia and Center City and can say that the only reliable routes are ones that operate almost as subway lines because of the numbers they carry (17, 33, 47 to name a few) and the rest...you never quite know when they're going to appear even with a schedule in hand. I hope that this new initiative, beyond making its stated improvements, moves SEPTA to seriously lok at their scheduling system overall. Reliability is one of the things that makes transit an attractive choice to those who can choose and is what people who rely on the system should expect and get from it.
Rachel,
My name is Ariel Ben-Amos and I work in the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities and am working on the Route 47 Service Enhancement Project. The concerns you raise are ones that we take very seriously and have actually paid specific attention to: for instance, we made sure not to consolidate any stops near senior centers or near child-care centers along the route. We walked the route many times, surveyed riders, and paid special attention to lots of data, from the delay per intersection, to ridership numbers before we developed our plan. Most importantly we listened to customer complaints. Customers told us that the 47 was unreliable and crowded. Our interventions aim to address these and other issues.
For instance, you mention over-crowding in the front of the bus. We are looking to address that in two ways. SEPTA is stationing staff at 7th and Washington during the AM peak rush hour and at 8th and Market during the evening peak rush hour. This will allow customers with passes to board from the rear of the bus. This should make sure that people don't just crowd the front, and help us get more people one and avoid being pass-up. We are also asking bus operators to remind passengers to move to the rear. Ultimately, however, riders need to police themselves and move to the back.
The Route 47 Service Enhancement Pilot aims to improve service and reliability through the combination of lots of low cost interventions that in the end we believe will provide SEPTA riders more reliable service. Stop consolidation has been a proven method across the country to help speed up service and improve reliability and its for that reason why we are experimenting with it here in Philadelphia. Our pilot runs 6 months. If at the end of the pilot period we have not seen any improvement in service and our customers still do not like the initiatve than we will reconsider the entire initiative. We hope you will give the pilot a chance and let us know if service has improved. SEPTA's website www.septa.org/47pilot allows you to send us feedback and help us track what you the riders think.
Kudos to SEPTA for crafting a thoughtful and intelligent response to this issue. SEPTA buses are painfully slow; if service could be made faster, more efficient, and more reliable, ridership might well increase and the experierence for current riders will be unquestionably better. I sincerely hope this pilot proves successful & that these improvements are brought to the buses in my neck of the woods (Fairmount).
Rachel's concerns are valid, especially considering the large numbers of elderly people who rely on SEPTA to get around. Nevertheless it is not realistic to expect transit lines to provide door-to-door service (and for those who really need that level of service, there's Paratransit), and I think it's likely that the improvements in service will cut down on the number of buses that arrive late and packed to the gills. In short, I expect it'll be a tradeoff worth making for most riders.
Well that didn't take long for someone to complain about this. Hopefully no one doeswhat they did in West Philly with the 52:
MassTransitMag.com » Article » Philadelphia Bus Halted By Irate SEPTA Riders
As they said over there:
"If it wasn't broke, why fix it?" Randleman said. "What is to be gained by such a radical change?"
Quicker routes and more reliable service, duh.
As a person who rides this route on a regular basis, I live a block and a half from the 7th and Ritner stop, this strikes me as the dumbest idea that SEPTA has come up with in a very long time. While I am aware that the buses are frequently over-crowded, do you really think making people walk an extra block (mine would be Porter or Wolf St) will lessen the crowding. Instead of coming up with an idea that will create more inconvenience for passengers, why don't you do a couple of things. The first would be to look at your ridership, how many old people are on the route, how many young parents with children, how many people in wheelchairs or on crutches (there is a Vietnam veteran who walks with a cane at my stop as well as a young man who has been in a leg cast for over a year, just as an example; additionally there is at least one man who uses a wheelchair) The crowding would be eased if the drivers insist that passengers move to the back. I sometimes board the SB 47 at 8th and Chestnut and frequently watch a bus sail by because the bus is packed in the front, yet as the bus goes by, I can clearly see plenty of space in the rear of the bus. Many people depend on SEPTA not only to get to and fro work or school, but also to do there shopping, and while I and others appreciate that you have extended the #7 bus as well as the #29 and other routes, we also depend on the #47 to transfer to our final destination. By forcing people to walk that extra block to board or leave the #47 you have taken one step forward and two steps back. I may be able to get to Walmart to get 20lbs of cat litter, take the #7 to Oregon Ave and transfer to the NB 47, but now I have to walk an extra block t get home, to say nothing of formerly mentioned special needs passengers, whether on crutches, in wheelchairs in a way that is, as well as the elderly or trying to manage children and their purchases. Instead of sitting in your office strategizing how to "improve" the route, why don't you send some people out in the "real world" and not for a day, but for at least a week, and at different times of day to see what really goes on on these buses. Your solution may work on paper, where no passengers are in wheelchairs, or are on crutches, or have small children, but that is not the real world of SEPTA passengers. Enhance: To make greater as to cost, value, attractiveness, etc. Websters New World Dictionary of American Language. I see nothing in your plans that mentions cost, either to SEPTA or to passengers, but I do see much in this so-called "enhanced" pilot program that makes #47 route less attractive and less value.
If you can't travel an extra block (broken leg, physically disabled, etc) then you need to call paratransit. It is unrealistic to expect door to door service from your house to your destination. Just because you may have to walk 5 min to the bus stop doesn't mean this is a bad thing, that is a very selfish viewpoint. Consolidating stops means the bus "Stops Less", you don't expect that to help speed up the 47 a little?
Your post leads me to believe you are unfamiliar with the way in which transit services operate: Serve as many passengers as possible, as quickly as possible.
This isn't a limo, the person behind the wheel is not your personal driver. For the benefit of all riders, not just yourself, your going to be walking an extra block, don't forget to stretch.
That is a good post Rachel. I agree that you should not remove stops from the route. Yes add more buses to the route at peak times. How about getting one of those supervisors that are usually sitting on their butt in their septa vehicle more involved. Have some supervision at places like 8th & Market to move people to the back of the bus. I have ridden the 47 enough times to see that the driver can easily become overwhelmed plus some drivers are disinterested to begin with. Oh, and when it comes to traffic lights, imagine how much later buses would be if they didn't run through red lights. As a driver for over 30 years, I have had to be aware of this public safety issue the whole time.
This is the smartest idea that SEPTA and the City of Philadelphia have had in a while, and it should be expanded system wide. Bus stops located every 2-3 blocks is standard practice in all other major cities. It's simple common sense that speeds up service, reduces travel times, and saves fuel and energy.
Everyone must make personal sacrifices for the greater good of society; it won't kill you are anyone else to walk an extra block. If other cities can do it, why can't it be done here? Stop complaining, get with the program, and join the 21st century; it's about time that we stopped catering to the lazy and stupid of Philadelphia.