[sustran] Re: How much money should we spend on nicer buses?

[bruun at seas.upenn.edu]

Peter

The fact that you even had to explain this to someone shows that there  
is a lack of professional
planning capacity overseeing the network.

Eric Buun

Quoting Peter Lutman <lutman at globalnet.co.uk>:

> Dear Eric,
>
> I was particularly interested by Dr Adhiraj Joglekar's contribution  
> relating to several Indian Cities posted today. Much of what he  
> stated is sound common sense. I have knowledge only of Mumbai and  
> perhaps the following comments relating to that City may have  
> appication elsewhere.
> 1    I was in a team asked to examine the Mumbai bus network. With  
> many hundreds of routes spread over a huge area and carrying 4.5  
> million customers daily, this was an impossible task in the project  
> time available. We therefore concentrated on routes feeding the CBD  
> peninsula.
> 2    Even this had a huge route network with bus services extending  
> to the west coastal communities, the central ones. the eastern ones  
> and Nowe Mumbai.
> 3    Analysis of the network route by route showed that the nonsense  
> promulgated 50 years ago by the Consultancy arm of the old London  
> Transport (add the two way journey time to the two terminal layovers  
> and divide the total by the number of buses one wished to deploy on  
> the route to determine the frequency) had resulted in various  
> services offering headways of 19, 23, 37 and 52 minutes and the  
> like. Note I have called these headways not frequencies.
> 4    Clearly the people planning this nonsense either never  
> themselves travel on these services or possibly catch exactly the  
> same bus every day to and from their destination so they know what  
> time it is scheduled. Most people are unable to plan their days with  
> such precision.
> 5    Bearing in mind the scorching heat / driving monsoon rain  
> depending upon the season, the maximum interval between buses should  
> be 10 minutes or less on every important route. (Dr Joglekar  
> mentions 5 minute intervals but there were very few individual  
> routes reaching this frequency - although some trips where several  
> routes ran in common would offer this level of service)
> 6    The absolute minimum urban headway in a metropolis like Mumbai  
> should be 30 minutes. No bus service should be planned unless the  
> headway is divisible into 60 minutes - the only acceptable ones are  
> anything up to 6 minutes, 7.5 minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15  
> minutes 20 minutes and 30 minutes.
> 7    The times should remain as constant as possible throughout the  
> day (allowing for running time variations to cope with peak  
> congestion) so that customers can remember the times past each hour  
> when buses leave a terminal and have these fixed in their minds -  
> e.g. 07,22,37 and 52 minutes past each hour. This is the basic key  
> to successful marketing of any public transport timetable, and is  
> even more vital where, as in Mumbai, the timetables are not  
> published or advertised.
> 8    The rubbish routes with crazy, non memorable, non recurring  
> headways should be ditched. Most of them probably only exist due to  
> vote-catching political pressure from someone who doesn't understand  
> the basics of public transport.
> 9    Transfer tickets should be available to enable customers who  
> used the 37 / 52 minute headway routes and the others instead to use  
> two frequent routes and interchange between them realising the  
> benefit of short waiting times, staying cool and dry, getting there  
> more quickly etc without any financial penalty. Season tickets would  
> offer the same convenience but might not be affordable by those  
> living on the financial margin.
> 10   The resources from the rubbish routes should be used to  
> strengthen the rest of the network, so the 19 minute headways might  
> become 15 minutes (or 20), the 27 minutes become 20 or 30 etc.
> 11    I could go on about the removal of double deck high capacity  
> buses and the need for two conductors on these and the handful of  
> articulated buses, the impossibility of clambering up (and down)  
> three steps by the elderly or handicapped (who are effectively  
> excluded from public transport as a result) but these are other  
> matters not relating to the route / timetable patterns themselves.
> 12    The chief planner told me on my second visit that he had  
> listened to my earlier recommendations and had implemented many of  
> them in the last 4-monthly service review. As a result daily  
> boardings had risen to 4.7 million customers (of course a few  
> thousand of these may have been due to a minority of users having to  
> transfer). These solutions will work everywhere in the world and  
> might be worth trying in the other Indian Cities too.
>
> Peter Lutman FCILT
>
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>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Eric Britton
>   To: Sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org
>   Sent: Sunday, June 21, 2009 6:24 AM
>   Subject: [sustran] How much money should we spend on nicer buses?
>
>
>   Dear Sustranes and particularly everyone who is chipping in on  
> this great topic, this seashell to the ear and you hear the roar of  
> the ocean. .
>
>
>
>   What I am seeing thus far is so very good, so very germane in many  
> ways for many paces, that I would like to turn it into a small  
> series of pieces for World Streets. I have already contacted several  
> of the authors to see how we might best handle this.
>
>
>
>   All thoughts on this and further discussion here are very welcome indeed.
>
>
>
>   Best/Eric
>
>
>
>   PS. Have you chipped in with your thoughts on World Streets. We  
> are getting some wonderful commentaries and commendations, and these  
> are going to be very valuable for us indeed as we chart a course for  
> the future.
>
>
>
>   Eric Britton | World Streets | The New Mobility Agenda  | Paris  |  
> +331 4326 1323 | Skype ericbritton
>
>
>
>
>
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