Open Thread: Primary Election, G restructure

Depending on what you mean by “coverage”, coverage and frequency are not mutually exclusive. If you mean unique bus stops, then yes, they are in opposition. But if you mean the number of people who can walk to a bus stop within a reasonable distance (which is typically about a quarter mile) then they aren’t.

Consider an imaginary city, with two bus lines, a block apart. Each line runs 10 miles. Each bus line runs every half hour. This saves a block of walking for most people, but it means that the bus runs infrequently. By simply consolidating on one of the streets, you could double the frequency of the bus. Now that you have made a huge improvement in frequency, put a little money into coverage. Extend the line a mile. This costs some money, which means that frequency goes down, but not by that much. You are still running the buses way more often, while you have increased frequency. Frequency and coverage have improved.

You’ve also increased ridership. There is very strong evidence that ridership is dependent on frequency. You reach a point of diminishing returns, but with the exception of the “spine” on Third Avenue, the 3/4 or the G itself, none of the buses in the area come close to that point. Ridership increases significantly as a bus goes from 15 minute to 10 minute frequency. With increased ridership, you have increased revenue, which can go into adding more service.

Metro Connect had plenty of routes that were overly optimistic. But it also had plenty of cost savings. Many of the ideas shown on the map I referenced earlier were from them (https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1O8i9WZI_SiPiXgxeAJbHXW99rrH51vo&usp=sharing). It is worth pointing out that this proposal is largely coverage neutral, while increasing frequency dramatically. Make the little loop at the tail of the 10 as I suggested earlier and you’ve actually increased coverage *and* frequency. You’ve gained coverage because of the 47, while losing only a tiny amount of coverage at the north end of Capitol Hill. All the while, you have made a huge improvement in frequency. Just as with that imaginary city, it can be done.

The area east of downtown probably has the most to gain from a major restructure. But there are plenty of other places which have similar issues. It is easy to find examples of why people prefer the current system. But when you keep having patch after patch of buses that are very close to each other, or overlap in odd ways, it adds up to bad frequency. Then we throw up our hands and say “oh well, what are you gonna do”. We blame the city council (and mayor) for not allocating enough money. We blame the voters of King County, for opposing extra funding. All of this is true, but we also have to come to grips with the fact that our system could be a lot more frequent without spending extra money, if we simply had a better network.

It has literally been ten years since David Lawson wrote this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2013/08/19/your-bus-much-more-often-no-more-money-really/. It is right there, in the title. We’ve only nibbled around the edges when it comes to that sort of network. We are still too timid when it comes to the network, despite massive spending on Link, and huge projects like RapidRide G. We focus way too much on specific trips, as opposed to building an efficient anywhere-to-anywhere network. Let me just quote from David’s excellent article:

So what’s the catch? There are two. First, more transfers will be required. Some very heavily used one-seat rides would turn into two-seat rides, always with one or both legs on Link or an 8- or 10-minute bus line. Second, riders might have to walk a few extra blocks. Corridors in today’s network that are close together and not separated by steep hills are mostly consolidated. Many deviations that slow down service are removed.

To many, this is intolerable. They don’t want to transfer. They don’t want to walk two blocks to the bus. They would rather the buses run every 20 minutes in the most urban area of the state than rebuild the network. Holy cow, 20 minutes! Just look at the proposal A:

10 — 20 minutes11 — 15 minutes12 — 20 minutes47 — Gone49 — 20 minutes

This is peak weekday service! This is at best! At night and weekends, it gets worse. I know the 10 and 12 combine for 10 minute headways, but that happens at Pine. Anything north of there, and you are out of luck. If you want to go downtown, you have to choose between two buses that run every 20 minutes, or a bus that runs every 15 (at best) all running on different streets. If you live in the Summit neighborhood — one of the most densely populated places in the state — the 47 is gone, which means that you have to walk to the 49, and that bus only runs every 20 minutes as well.

It is bad frequency because it is a bad network. It is no one’s fault, it just evolved that way. The routes go way back, and moving trolley wire is expensive. The G is not only a dramatic improvement in mobility, but it is a completely different bus. It doesn’t directly replace a particular bus (unlike say, the H, which replaced the 120). It replaces part of the 11 and 12, while running very close (and literally overlapping) the 2, but it isn’t a one-to-one replacement. It begs for a major restructure, not only to take advantage of it, but to build the sort of system that David called for ten years ago. What Metro has proposed isn’t it, and will have very disappointing ridership for a long time as a result.