This is particularly poignant for Louisville, as our city has taken a hatchet to our bus network due to "low ridership". Our buses are hideous - flat gray or blue paint with "TARC" stickers on the back windows. Our bus stops are often just placards nailed to utility poles - shelters are rare. The routes are inefficient. And yet leaders wonder why nobody wants to take the bus.
@@annoyed707 I honestly think that our city and state leaders subscribe to the notion that "transit is just for poor people to get to jobs until they have enough money to afford their own cars", and that any argument to the contrary that favors transit expansion is akin to a handout.
@@MinecraftWarrior22 I've felt as though the meetings are deliberately scheduled to have as little input from the general public as possible. Weekdays at 2pm? People are at work, and they're not going to call off work to attend a TARC board meeting.
If cities are serious about getting young people on transit, they need late night/24hr services on weekends at least. Going out to bars/clubbing and knowing that you never have to worry about expensive Ubers or designated drivers makes the night infinitely more fun. I was in Montreal last winter and we’d be catching the last bus back from Saint-Laurent Blvd out to Hochelaga at 3:30 am! Such an easy experience and there was even a stop 50 ft from our front door. The effects on reducing drunk driving is also massive.
. . . And it needs to be USABLE night service. Here in Boston, they have a few times experimented with "Owl" service that consists of buses running on a few routes mostly substituting for the rapid transit and light rail lines, charging a premium fare and not accepting any transit passes, and running only on Friday nights and Saturday nights, making it useless to most people who actually work late. In other words, they designed it ONLY for the partygoers, and they designed it to fail, which it always did. So if I'm coming home late from work, I have to resort to Fully Endogenous Express Transport. (Actually now I often have to do this before the end of service, because the regular service has gotten so bad, starting even before the pandemic.)
I wonder if some of this isn’t just a matter of moralism. Like, the people who make these policies don’t approve of that lifestyle and think that young people should be home sleeping, or reading the Bible, or something like that, instead of being out partying. Of course if that was the case (or if they really thought about it) they should ban cars too, since cars can get you anywhere, at any time of day or night, without needing someone else to implicitly approve of your choice by providing a service.
Does Montreal have a pulse night network? That is one with timed connections. This is a good model for night services that are at a low frequency, but sufficient that nightriders are not high and dry. Prague has a pulse night network. Demand responsive night services could also be provided where there are not enough night journeys to serve for night services to depend on fixed routes.
A pro about night service is to reduce drink driving rates. There is not a great deal of research for this but it makes sense to give options for those who drink.
Bingo! The CFL was really good at offering a free ride to and from the game on transit here in Edmonton as a way to curb drunk driving. Seemed to have done the trick since you never really hear of pile ups on or off the field after Elks games.. Especially with a 0-5 record!
Had a good example of a small change to transit that made a big difference recently. My wife need to travel to a hospital in a larger town every couple of months for a check-up on her eyes, and the dilating droplets they give her means she cannot drive back from there for a few hours. So normally, I'd drive her to the hospital for the appointments, hang around or do some shopping, then drive her back. There is a bus service from near our house that goes directly to the town, but it stopped in the town centre and required a change to another bus to get to and from the hospital, which is tricky when your vision is limited. Very recently, they extended that bus service so it continues on to the hospital and turns around there. This was a massive benefit and means she can now take a single-seat bus ride to and from the hospital without stumbling around with blurry eyes trying to change buses, and without me having to take time out of my working day or even start the car at all. Small change at minimal cost, major win, at least one return car journey completely eliminated.
Great, personally i would still drive my sister, wife, gf or a friend as its a medical condition and i want them to be safe. But yea what if i am out of town or busy or our vehicle is broken down
Night service is so important. It reduces drunk driving, provides a major boost for nightlife areas, and helps out people who work later hours have an affordable option to get home. Also, if you make transit easier for people to go to a bar, for example, or other non-normal hour activities, they are much more likely to consider using transit more during peak times. So while it may cost more per rider to have good night service, its benefits outweigh the cost and it actually augments regular hour service as well.
If they are at a low frequency (but sufficient that riders are not high and dry) then a pulse night network (like Prague has) is a good way to run it. And then there are demand responsive night services if there are not enough journeys to serve late at night for night services to depend on fixed routes.
Problem is, CEOs and managers of public transport companies never ever ride any of those trains themselves, so they couldn't bother less. In Germany, oftentimes we don't even have air conditioning because no one of the managers care at all. Quite contrary, if they spend less, they get a bonus for increasing revenue (generally speaking). If they would use it themselves, they would never even think a second of ordering busses or streetcars without ac.
I saw a study out of Australia on increasing bus service to low-income areas, and it found that a bus only needed to move *six people* per hour to provide a net economic benefit. With how low the bar potentially is for a positive public benefit, yeah it's absolutely worth going the extra mile to provide the little details and extra services that make even the least-sexy transit a better experience.
I think China is one of the few countries that build their transit project regardless of capacity and stuff. Many metro lines (especially in Chongqing) are built along wasteland and farmland where no one would want to use transit. However these places ended up being a very transit orientated suburbs after a few years which makes the otherwise nonsense station to be quite awesome. (This happens in Japan too I think)
Happened in the US in the 1800's too. Rich company buys land. Build a rail line to make the land valuable. Profit. Same with Japan kinda. JR owns all the land around the stations. That's how JR is profitable. Build cities around transit. It actually works.
@@whyarehumans Yea, sadly as time went on, this practice has slowly disappeared and now it's mostly a practice in Asia now, especially in Japan and China
Very sad and very true... The money invested is often never worth its perceived savings of time since induced demand just clogs up that road empty road too... The only way to guarantee empty roads is to put people onto transit or bikeways and for pedestrians proper walkways... Even if you drive, you should always want better transit to take people out of their cars and out of your way... I don't get how people who never use transit, don't want it.. Then again I also don't know how the working class would ever vote for a greasy orange billionaire... ;-)
In the old days, when they had local trolley or Interurban service, night running was often enhanced by hauling revenue, or freight. It was often hauled during the day, as needed. Today, you could probably fill many trains cargo cars with just packages from Amazon for local drop off and delivery.
I grew up in NYC . Where I live now only has bus service . If it runs at night , i don't know. I assumed all my life that everyone had night service. Why not? When in the Navy we went into Chicago to a club in So. Chicago to see Nancy Wilson and Flip Willson. The show was over at 1 AM . We walked a block and go on the bus. Until i began watching your fabulous show I believed two wrong things.1) you can stay out to all hours no problem, just have to wait for bus or subway a bit longer . 2) New York City and maybe Toronto were the only ones with subways. I must admit I was ohhh- dumb , to the facts. Im continually amazed by what im learning about transit from your show, and the world. Thanks. Oh ,yes, my age ,(81), might account for my misconcepsions .😂😂
Your night bus example was spot on. The basis of strong ridership is having good service, which means balancing geographic coverage, service hours, and frequency. I think transit agencies and the cities they serve sometimes "miss the forest for the trees". Ridership and coverage aren't an either/or but a starting point to realize community goals and values like connecting students to campus, discouraging drinking and driving, or connecting transportation hubs.
To the last point I really relate, as trains here in Germany (or at least my train route) stop at 1am till 5 am. I've had times when I wanted to go to parties in my nearby city but can't because I'd be uncomfortable not being able to go home at night, and even on long distance trips I have to make sure that I arrive before 11pm (as delays could make me wait hours on stations whilst there's nothing to do in the cities).
Its the same in the Netherlands. On weekdays my typical Intercity route from my study city to city close to me last leaves around midnight, on weekends the last one goes at 0.30. I so wished there was also one at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 am before returning to the typical schedule... i dont think night transit has to be half hourly like the Dutch rail network during the day, but at least having the ability to get home and not have to push through to 5-6am to catch the first train would be a lifesaver. Few weeks back they for a special event in the city, so NS ran one more at 1.30 also, and that was such a lifesaver. Still, its not fun to know that if that train is cancelled you are stuck. Thats also the issue, you dont want to catch the last train, as if that doesnt show up youre stuck. Arriva recently started running some night trains on select routes that are actually ran by NS during the day, which is funny, but really it should just be something the NS does, but if NS doesnt do it, kudos to Arriva for tapping into that and hopefully they expand those services. Those are moreso routes from Schiphol Airport, for people flying in the night... which is also crazy, if you land in Schiphol in the night you can only really get to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other few Randstad cities but not further into the country.
There's another dimension to this, and I didn't realize how big it was until recently. I live in Warsaw, a city of about two million people, so not exactly a cosy village. One day I realized that I, a 40+ years old person, don't actually know the entire city. There are whole districts I've never been to. I begun to wonder why and quickly realized it's two things: - when moving, I always pick places with good transit, because I don't have (and don't want) a car - all my friends are people who live in places with good transit, and while some of them have cars, they don't use them much Did I ever pick friends based on their transit preferences? Of course not. But I'm willing to bet transit choices correlate with lifestyle choices that make me and the other person a better match. And also: since I rely on transit, it's naturally easier to become friends with someone who also lives near good transit. The bottom line is this: selective transit segregates people. Places with good transit grow apart from those without it, not just in terms of connectivity, but also in terms of social and cultural links. In Warsaw you can see this when you look at election results maps. Statistically speaking, people who live away from transit vote differently! I mean, they can vote whoever they like as far as I'm concerned, but the fact that people with different life choices are much less likely to meet each other, because they are literally NOT each other's neighbours - that's just dangerous.
In Boston, the Red and Blue lines don't have a direct connection. I lived in Cambridge on the Red Line, and was unusual among my friends for having ever taken the Blue Line to see what was out there.
Another thing to have in mind when cities consider having night transportation services is the overall security rate or perception of the city, because it is well known that security levels tend to lower during night hours, and that is a very important thing to consider not only by transit administrators but also by the users of said night services.
I live in Canada and the perception argument is one of the main reasons why I'm so excited for VIA's new Siemens rollout. They're capable of being faster but on our unoptimized tracks, they probably won't nearly reach their maximum. But, they're beautiful on the inside and outside, and someone seeing one pass by while on the highway might have a change of heart by seeing something so new and nice, compared to the ancient rolling stock from the 70's. It might give them the impression that Canada is trying to improve its rail service, or even just remind them that it exists at all, and that might help shift the tides. Every time I see a new set ride by in the distance on my way home, it leaves a way bigger impression than the old ones ever did. It helps defeat the age old "trains are ancient technology" argument.
Exactly! I had this discussion with my physio. She grew up in rural and semi-remote Canada where transit just isn't a thing. Now living in Toronto she needs to occasionally travel for physio sports contracts - cool. She was telling me that going to Ottawa at such and such a time was tiring and she didn't know if she wanted to keep doing it; but clearly thinking about it as a driver. To which I replied why not just take the train? The new ones are beautiful, and while the service isn't super fast it's pretty much as quick a the car or faster and she could rest, chill, even nap -- she simply hadn't considered it, just hadn't occurred to her. The more the "beautiful experience" can be seen as a benefit, people will think about it and ditch the car.
I agree with frequency driving ridership and trust in the system and I think it's an interesting point to think about the appearance of transit vehicles and how that can effect the perception of how often they drive past. For example if 10 bright yellow or orange busses go past the window while you're out at a restaurant do you notice more and think "that's a lot of busses" VS 10 boring grey busses going past.
God as a Danish guy the fact that all of these little things are needed to make transit good needs to be said. Here, our politicans and other officials are hellbent on cost cutting and microscopic efficiency increases. Our buses may look alright on the outside but inside you wont find many creature comforts. Heck they often try to downsize buses and have almost exclusively 12m (40ft) buses in their tenders cause in their logic, because there are so many suppliers of 12m buses, the bidders to operate the routes can get lower prices for the vehicles, costing the transit agency less, whereas with larger or smaller buses, the market supply is lower, resulting in higher cost per vehicle. And one place we especiall fall behind is our stations and transit hubs. Many are straight up awful with very few passenger facilities and basically nowhere to sit and wait for your bus or train, and often exposing passengers completely to the elements! Combine all of this together with a extremely conveluted fare system and the high ticket prices which here are twice that of most North American cities and several European cities too, and you get a system which many think is very poor value and which ultimately leads to Copenhagen having a modal share which even American cities like the Twin Cities manage to beat. Ultimately one cant run a good transit system by looking at just individual lines or even just the existance of lines in themselves. You need to be much more hollistic about it. How are passengers gonna get to the transit stop, is it safe for them to do so, is it gonna be a pleasant and or safe space they can wait at, is the vehicle gonna be comfortable and clean, are the schedules easy to follow, can transfers be made without making passengers uncomfortable, etc etc. The most infuriating thing though is when you know all of the issues can be solved and that the funding to solve them exists, but is spent in other ways that are infuriating. Like the 3.5 billion canadian dollars (or about 18 billion Danish kroner) annually that the government spends on a tax rebate for commutes which inherrently in design benefits car drivers and car dependency most. One could double the amount of departures on all bus lines in the country and slash all ticket prices in half for just half of that sack of money! The other half could go for stuff like much improved train and bus stations, or overnight services, or anything else, and simplifying ticket systems.
Went to work on a shift I hadn't worked before at a hospital I don't go to often only to realise at 10pm after my shift in the middle of car stroad hell that there's wasn't going to be any transport home. Live in Melbourne and at the time I thought the night services that I had caught in the past going clubbing ran all week, oh how wrong I was.
If you cut low ridership routes, you lose their service as feeders to the high ridership routes, which then lose ridership. As for attractiveness of transit, the first priority is to get reliable service with decent frequency. Boston's MBTA is failing in these basics so much (and getting worse in the last few years even before the pandemic) that even during the day I often have to go to work (and even more often come back from work at night) using Fully Endogenous Express Transport.
I can really relate to your annecdote around Night services.I live in Düsseldorf in Germany, a City of around 600.00 people. We have S-Bahn and regional trains for the outer suburbs and trams, Stadtbahnen and buses for inner city service. And thankfully, we have an extensive night service system on the weekend. Some Stadtbahn lines travel half hourly and for routes without Stadtbahn service, there is a big network of night buses. They even form 15 min frequencies on core routes. And let me tell you: They are FULL. I’m always quite impressed how many people use them. Sure, they take a little longer than normal routes during the day, but they are the reason many people can go out, enjoy a nice drink or some beers in the old town and don’t have to worry about a 30 € Uber or taxi ride. I love this so much and always miss it in other cities, even some German cities. Yes, it’s a luxury by comparison, but it’s really a quality of life aspect here in the city!
@@Myrtone yes, our whole system runs on a „Taktfahrplan“. The night network is additionally timed to connect to certain Stadtbahn-routes and S-Bahn and regional express trains at major stations, so that they kind of make up for the low headwaves at night. And the services are often very well used, which in my opinion shows how important the night service is!
San Diego just debuted open payment ahead of Comic Con. MTS was losing several million annually in fare revenue due to a cumbersome app. Open payment will circumvent this and attract tons of occasional riders who would otherwise give up after missing the train while fumbling with an app!
Toronto's night buses - humorously, but not-really-accurately called the Vomit Rocket - has been around forever and I love it. When I was younger and slightly more foolish than I still am, I did some late night Film Festival viewings. I never gave getting home much thought because I knew it wasn't going to be an issue regardless of whether I made the last train or needed the night bus, it was all pretty much the same for "just getting home". It's funny the impact of how I saw the city from that point on having only just moved to Toronto a few years before. It really cemented the place as a 24 hour lifestyle whether I actually stayed out late - which I don't much any more - or not. It *felt* bigger, felt like I could do anything whenever I felt like it and the city was there with services that other people use to live it.
Shoutout to my good friend Michael Kranz from the Metro Transit Council! He's the senior head of TOD there, and in addition to being a total city nerd (pardon the pun), he's a great guy, and knows his way around an urbanist content creator! He recommended this book to me, and I intend to read it.
Hunt Club Rd in Ottawa stands out to me. High traffic street with all sorts of stores that gets one bus an hour... and it doesn't even go down the street itself for most of the route.
I have a personal experience with this. A bus that I take changes from every 10 minutes to every 30 abruptly at 6:30 pm. I have taken a few buses after that (usually around 7-7;30) and they are all very crowded. I think they should change it gradually to every 15 minutes first and then 30.
An interesting study from my region would be the RNN line 651. It's essentially the only line which belongs to Nieder-Olm (a town SW of Mainz) in that it never leaves the borders and said line is notable run by minibusses when every other line is served by regional (640, 652, 653, 656) or city (66) busses and it also runs hourly (every other line, sans 656, runs half-hourly on weekdays). It arguably only exists to serve the Goldberg neighbourhood (since it's the only line which serves it while the nearest stops from there are half a kilometre apart) where busses drive from the railway station to Goldberg and then back on saturday, though they take a more circular route (through the Weinbergring, well served by the 66 otherwise) on weekdays (no busses on sundays, though this applies to most busses except 640 and 652). Ridership is, expectedly, relatively low, but it's still some sort of lifeline for the most isolated dwellings of Nieder-Olm.
The nice thing about Japan is if you work late or go out partying, they have very cheap "pod" hotels you can stay in, and the larger cities have taxi service that will send a driver out to drive your car home for you as a passenger.
The late night service is really so underrated, especially in smaller cities. I go everywhere by bus or train, but if I want to go to the cinema and watch a movie that starts at like 8 or 9 pm, I have to take the car - otherwise, I would have to wait almost an hour for the train or not get home at all. So not only do they have less riders on the earlier service, they also have more cars in the city center that wouldn't need to be there.
I remember when I got stranded in one of the most infamous neighbourhoods in Naples late one night because their Metro stopped running counterclockwise after 10:20pm. Came as such a shock to me because here in Edmonton, I take it for granted that I can study on campus until midnight and still be able to catch a train home because the LRT runs until 1 am.
I used to study in a provincial capital and while I didn't expect a great public transport system like at home I certainly thought it would be decent, granted I was staying in a regionally important city of 100000 people and not some tiny backwater town. I should have checked the bus schedule ahead of time because the particular line to my campus (not the main campus but still) didn't run past 7pm during my first year, so the first time we had late classes I won a surprise 30 minutes evening walk to the train station.
i live in a fairly small city (you probably wouldnt even call it a city) and we have at least hourly trams all night. so when i was in paris and wanted to go somewhere at 3 am i was quite shocked to find the metro station closed. didnt even consider that it would stop running at night. sure, there are still many buses, but instead i decided to walk from the 20th arrondissement to the eiffel tower, so basically across paris. all in the middle of the night. one of my most memorable experiences
You could make a video about the Danish Flextrafik system. It is like a taxi/uber of the elderly, but it runs buses, so that it can pick up several people on the same trip. This is an alternative to buses in rural areas. You have to book the trip in advance, so that the system can calculate an optimal route.
In the Greater Boston area, transit runs pretty late, specifically the subways but I think some of the busses to. The subway specifically has helped me get to a club in the downtown area, one the really only gets going pretty late at night, meaning there is a pretty good chance that I would not be going there. Their also some other clubs father out that I've considered going to but have sometimes hesitate specifically because I'm not sure how late some of the bus routes are. Essentially the late-night serves help create business for these places. And while I can not say exactly how much I will note that while their services where definitely sparser they are on the day, I am not the only one taking them. Also, that's not even considering more necessary things. Hospitals have to be open at night so having services for those who need them either to for services or a job is important, especially sense, you might be in a condition where you don't necessarily need and ambulance but are not if the best condition to drive. Have transit services means you are not taking way the ambulance who it is more necessarily for. Also a lot of business stay open pretty late, and that provides all kinds of convinces, one thing that probably help this, is the ability for their employees to get home, even those who do not have a car. Finally, it is worth noting that driving at night is at least somewhat more dangerous because if it is dark, plus a lot of accidents happen when people are drive despite being tired including from being out at late.
in vienna, currently there are 2 big operations. upgrade of U2, construction of U5, and the maintenance of the S-bahn main line (stammstrecke). and everything still works, with one main artery currently cut and another one shortened. so, you need to be able to upgrade and maintain your system without everything grinding to a halt. that's a very important thing, but also quite invisible if everything works.
I had considered buying a house in Trenton, NJ (it was near work) but backed away because SEPTA’s regional rail no longer runs late at night. That’s not to mention how frustrating it is that Philly’s subways don’t run 24 hours on the weekends anymore.
The existence of lower ridership transit routes also affects the perception of a transit system! Even if a route isn't necessarily the most used, when someone is looking at using transit more frequently, they'll be a lot more likely to choose to take transit if the map they look at has more routes. Even if every user might not use every single route, it gives confidence in the system and lessens the "I can't use transit for this route and since I sold my car I'm screwed" anxiety that most people have, especially those who don't typically take transit
The key word is in your title: “Service.” People prioritize clean, safe, reliable and frequent service. Good evening and late night service is important in attracting riders who might otherwise drive into congested areas because of the possibility they might be late coming home. Attractive vehicles is a consideration, but should be limited to 1-2% of vehicle cost. Don’t let planners get carried away with novel designs. Standardization is important to keep costs down and expand transit.
I haven't read Walker's book yet, but I have read some of his blog posts and his talk about revamping Houston's bus system. Actually that's a good example: like many US cities, Houston had a coverage-oriented radial network of infrequent bus routes. Lots of places had "bus service" but you had to wait and many trips were much longer than driving. With almost the same amount of resources, the new system became a grid of higher frequency bus lines, and much higher ridership, serving many more people and making a bigger reduction of driving. Ridership _and_ coverage might be ideal, but US transit typically has very limited resources, and a very bad starting configuration. That's the sort of thing I've seen Walker write about. Or put another way: yeah, Walker and other advocates _know_ that ridership isn't constant and is a function of attractiveness (mostly frequency). Which is why they advocate concentrating limited resources on lines you can make frequent, and thus attractive to ridership. If you want night service and suburban coverage as well, at some point you simply need more resources. (I think in the end Houston did find some extra money to keep up coverage.) Night service as loss leader or confidence insurance is a good point. Though some places might ask whether it should be provided as expensive fixed route buses, low-frequency fixed routes buses, or some sort of flexible/on-demand service.
I'd also add that just looking at individual lines and their potential has the danger of neglecting network effects. Yes, running a line from a city to a smaller town might not have a lot of riders. But let's say you also connect that smaller town further to some villages nearby. Now you feed everyone from those villages into the system, which connects through the town as a secondary transportation hub to the larger nearby city, and perhaps even further onto a highspeed train network, where suddenly those few village bus riders generate commercially significant ridership. And perhaps in return you now get travel between those destinations too, weekend travelers that want to relax outside the city etcpp. If you get a network as complete as (everyone's favorite example) Switzerland, then almost any route suddenly is worth it, because it all feeds into the larger network that's already there, generating extra trips in all sorts of directions. But to get there, you can't just cherry pick the biggest fruits, you must design a functioning, multi-centric network.
Perhaps allowing workers to commute from places with more affordable housing, easing the strain on housing in the larger center, especially for the hybrid jobs with a few trips a week to the office.
Mostly unconnected to this video, but I just returned to the UK from a week's trip to the Netherlands, riding on a ton of different transit over there. It was mostly fantastic, but one thing I felt that was really bad was the way you have to tap in AND out on every tram and bus. This made getting on and off quite stressful (especially as I had 2 kids with me and had to do their tickets too) and I would guess also increased dwell times. I personally find it much better using systems like the Croydon Tramlink, Manchester Metrolink or DLR, where you touch in and out at the station/stop. I don't know if you've ever made a video about this, but I think it could be quite an interesting topic.
I agree. I found that system to be quite annoying too. But to be fair, coming from a place with an honor system (but random checks) I'm not a big fan of any system where I have to check in and check out at all because I'm not used to it and terribly scatterbrained at times. 😅 I've had annual tickets for my home city for years and a ticket for my whole country for the last two of those, so most of the time I don't even have to think about buying a ticket. It's really convenient.
@@juulian1306 It would be interesting to see stats on how ticket barriers affect revenue and fare dodging. I suspect they do work, but it's interesting how some countries (like Germany) have actively decided not to use them.
Services which get less riders but expand the network are important because people don't just travel to one place all the time, they also visit their aunt once a month, go to a special store for that one part they need to fix their dishwasher once a year, whatever. If they need a car for most of those infrequent trips they will get one and are more likely to drive on other trips, too.
Range anxiety is worse because you would presumably have to leave your car there and come back for it later. Late night service anxiety just means you might have to pay for a cab or Uber home.
Living on Montreal's west island I only have the 354 night bus, it is not ideal but manageable with its 45min headway, and it is convenient that it stops within 50m of my apartment, but it takes me to downtown Montreal, not to other west island suburbs. So, some of the time the night bus is great if I am going to or coming from the city. The REM (once it opens) will be closed from 1am to 5am so that will help to some degree.
6:34 Imagine how dead Toronto's nightlife would be without the TTC or GO transit. All those people on King St West, The Jays Game, the Leafs or Raptors, 95% are coming with transit. Honestly besides the obvious traffic benefit, it's a public safety benefit since more people have a safe alternative than drinking&driving. It completely adds to the city's nightlife, and for that alone it should be considered an economic multiplier that influences decision makers.
Night transit isn't just for partygoers and clubbing. For people who work late night or early morning shifts, it's a necessity. Also, imagine that you had to go to the emergency room. You were able to take transit there, but by the time you're discharged, it's 2 in the morning and you're in no condition to drive. How are you supposed to get home?
From reading the comments it appears my city of Niagara Falls isn’t the only one with 1 stop an hour bus stop. The problem now is because residential and commercial are so far apart for a lot of people, trying to design new transit routes could be a problem.
Vancouver's cruddy night buses are very much a deterrent to depending on transit there. We should agitate for all future skytrain expansion to be designed to accommodate 24 hr service, whether or not Translink has any immediate plans for such a service. This will make it easier to eventually get that 24 hr service implemented. It's an automated system, ferchistsakes!
I have the luck to live in a condensed city where about 19 day lines and 1 night one (by Spanish standards) just do the work. And quite efficiently, since the system managed to move almost 25 million passenger on a city of 230 000 people last year. On the not so bright side, I’d say the fleet has grown old. Most of the buses were here already by 1992; they only received AC this year! Also, the University line and Marineda line (Marineda’s a shopping centre) do seem crowded enough for me to justify a light rail. They go through dense neighborhoods and they’re crowded lines, even if they use bendy buses
Ffom an industry POV, you need a time period for maintenance, with increasing amplitudes, that makes the period for that highly needed maintenance shorter and shorter. It's one of the reasons why TLCs, Total Line Closures, are becoming more common. I still support later and earlier trains, especially where the last service is at 9 or 10 pm already, but i would not make full night service by rail a priority. Disclaimer, i live in a city of 1 million people, with 11 in the whole country. Some lines have the last train of rhe day pull out of the station at 9 pm, i fully agree that that's too late. I think a late night service around 11-12 is the bare minimum, and around the larger cities, it should be closer to 1 am. But I would not have an issue when those late services were a bus, and full rail service the night through is much, much lower on my priority list. Other elements you mentioned, absolutely. Quiet carriages, family cars with a small children's corner, (USB) sockets... are some small things that often don't cost much, but make such a difference to the user. I'll add waiting infrastructure to the list, and clear signalling (I'm still in love with Barcelona's floor painted arrows to neighbouring bus stops).
All-night train service does seem rare, with NYC assisted by its wealth of local+express routes, allowing it to have local-only night service on the track not being maintained that night. Chicago has a few all-night lines too (Red, Blue), I'm not sure how it pulls it off.
I think it's a perfect compromise, like here in Berlin, to run 24h train service during the weekends and before holidays, and run night service with busses all other nights. And you'd run your night train service with reduced frequency, that still lets you do a lot of train maintenance during those nights, and track maintenance during the week.
I recently was sent a video- Hobart, buses versus rail. It relates to a debate between public interest groups and the state government as to which is more suitable to Australia’s island state’s largest city, a bus way or a light rail line. The corridor will run from the remaining single heavy rail line to the northern suburbs. An interesting news story produced by our ABC channel which highlights the government position of a busway as a cost saving measure and the public’s call for a rapid transit line for comfort and convenience. My only question here, and should be noted I’ve never been there, if the rail option is adopted that wouldn’t a meadium rail train be more suitable than a light rail system as proposed for the future needs of this smallish city.
I think the basic conclusion I have is that public transit is best when it's either in government hands or very heavy regulated if in private hands. The minute you let the private sector have control they will not prioritize routes or things that are not profitable. Something not mentioned is elderly people who rely on transit in non core areas. Where I live that makes up a big share of the ridership. In my opinion transit is basically like healthcare. It's something that works better when everyone chips in and is aware of the fact that it's simply better as not for profit.
@@mindstalk depends where you live. Not in my city. And basically that's the fault of people for not getting out and pressuring the government to do more. If it were privatized you'd have absolutely zero say or influence over cuts.
Good looking vehicles really give the impression that you are investing in and you care about the transit, even if the vehicles are actually already 30 years old (see London). I live in Munich now, and they „renovated“ some of the older trains, giving them LCD screens and automated announcements, but they didn’t renovate any of the interior. So now you have trains with LCD screens and chipping paint/fake-wood-wallpaper, which, unfortunately is not a good look imo.
@@bobi7152 Yeah, but you might not have the choice of "pretty frequent" at the same price. Especially in the US, there's frequently a "buy American" mandate when using federal or state money, so a transit agency that wanted to use foreign vehicle designs would have to come up with a lot more of its own money. We can call that bad policy, but it still is current policy, so a US transit agency is prudent to buying whatever's provided by US manufacturers, which "frequent" meaning "buying cheap vehicles" meaning "buying the current standard".
Speaking of night buses, NYC is a lot weaker there than one might expect of a transit city. Now, I'm not saying that there should necessarily be a bunch of overnight-exclusive bus routes (or overnight-exclusive alternate routes for day routes) like in some cities, but between the abysmal frequencies (most of the 24-hour routes run hourly overnight and tend to lack assistance from other routes) and spotty coverage (as an example, there's a huge swath of Brooklyn that only sees D and N service overnight, both of which cover only a portion of that entire area), it makes overnight travel much harder than it needs to be.
Night service is essential, especially to the airport, or night life areas A big IT hub city called bengaluru in south india, it does not have metro connection to the airport, so the govt. runs "rapid" bus (Only very few stops, but yea bad traffic) to the airport those are 15-30 min in the day and every hour in the night And i have travlled on them in the day, evening, night everytime
Accessability and networking are also instrumental in making public transit worthwhile. Ridership is crucial but does not highlight the greatness of services.
Good point about the aesthetic of transit vehicles! I wonder if that's a factor in the common perception in North America that transit is for poor people.
At the very least in 2024 cities of a certain size... I.e. 1,000,000 probably should run 24/7/365 at least in some rudimentary form especially if you have a rail network since train stations tend to act as defacto meeting places/emergency shelter/landmarks in each neighbourhood. And at each station you should be able to find basic services like bathrooms, snack machines and security/police if need be. I can't tell you how many times I've canceled plans because I'd have to access one of the worst/unsafe/unmanned LRT stations in Edmonton, Coliseum... Funnily enough during K-Days which is on right now there's always a police and security presence which makes it feel really really different and safe and I'd even say people with children are fine to use it... Just not after July 31st... ;-)
Well more and more transitlines are beeing closed in my country because they don´t turn a profit. Like in my place busses are run by private companies, and they need to make money if not, they won´t run.
Transit doesn't just bring in fare revenue, it also raises land value and thus property taxes around good routes. Also this took me a while to understand but lots of public services aren't "profitable". Is a park with playground equipment and a baseball field profitable? Anyone can just use it for free! People have to maintain and take care of it, it's a money loser! Let's get rid of it!
As a Torontonian, I spend my winters in Melbourne Florida. They have a public bus system that has poor ridership, It is rare to see bus shelters at the stops and with the hot sun it only helps to discourage ridership.
At what point does cost recovery become so low the service should consider going fare-free? Major cities with high ridership can often recover 70% or more of the cost of transit from fares, but my midwestern town of 250k-ish only recovers 10% of the cost of the (incredibly bad) bus service from fares.
One problem with completely free transit is that in big cities and other areas with improperly managed homeless problems is that a lot of smelly, scary homeless people will ride them, scarying off the "normies", until anybody who has any other option stops taking it. The opposite of providing incentives to ride. Soon, the only people who be riding transit with be the homeless and others who have absolutely no other option.
Can I ask you a question Reece🧐🧐 ....what is the type of service for Singapore's bus system??...I've been wondering wether is it a spider web network or hub and spoke network cuz they've got like 20 bus interchange /terminals in their country alone and that's MASSIVE ✨✨
The amount of complainst Line 2 in Toronto gets about it's trains being old even though they're not that old is staggering. People moan to me all the time that they are 40 or 50 year old trains and that the city needs to buy more. The trains are barely 20 years old. They're fine. If they had a sleek design the perception of the system in the publics eye would be dramatically improved.
Speed is not necessarily what riders want. They probably think of speed as a measure of quality and utility, because the automotive industry has taught them that. However, speed comes with a penalty: the faster a vehicle goes, the higher the elemental time value to stop it. That translates into fewer stops, often longer boarding times, and hte necessity of an additional form of transportation to get to the limited service. Rather than speed, I would suggest that reliability is a more reliable measure. Non-core features can make all the difference. Access is one of those, comfort is definitely another (after all, WHO fits into a 17" wide seat, spaced 29" apart?) Aesthetics. It is widely assumed that sexy smooth aerodynamic shapes are the way to go. But how is this aesthetic achieved? With carbon fibre, fibreglass, resins, plastics--do you see a problem here? Most of us don't--again, thanks to the automotive industry. None of those materials can be recycled effectively, so we're offloading a problem on succeeding generations. The vehicles aren't environmentally sustainable. One oddity I have discovered in pricing a wide range of light rail vehicles is that the cost of a conventional level-floor replica streetcar is considerably lower than a low-floor articulated vehicle, If low platforms are used, 100% of a level floor car is useable, as opposed to a fraction of that of the "low floor" model. Cost and function lead to different conclusions. So--why not keep it simple, AND make it beautiful? You're quite right that we need to be open to creating a service that has value that might come in ways people can't predict or understand. One of those "unpredictables" might well be a night service that feels safe. I've lived in Vancouver since 1982, and I have honestly never laid eyes on the elusive "night bus." It might not even exist for all I know.
I think frequency (unbunched) and direct routes are the top two requirements. (Direct meaning taking about the same distance as driving (or less, with modal filtering), rather than longer because of a hub and spoke system.) If you can't do frequency, then yeah, reliable schedule becomes key. But reliability of any kind is hard if not impossible for buses in congested traffic.
@@mindstalk Precisely why I think that we need to look much closer at the mode of transit. Ultimately the reason we tend not to look at light rail is because buses are effectively very heavily subsidized by public roads. The relatively low speed of surface rail and high carrying capacity makes it potentially much more effecfive than other modes, in part because it is less likely that a secondary form of transit would be needed to access it. The bigggest flaw in the planning of Vancouver's SkyTrain system is its extreme dependency on induced ridership, rather than network thinking.
@@mungmungie Can you expand on flaws? I thought SkyTrain was pretty awesome, though maybe the trains are too short for even higher ridership. The big flaw I heard of was that areas around the stations aren't reliably zoned to allow high density.
@@mindstalk The premise behind SkyTrain is to have sufficient ridership to justify it. Trouble is--it doesn't on its own. It depends on induced ridership to achieve the figures it does, and even that is difficult to verify since TransLink uses a measurement system no one else does. It has been inferred that its capacity is 20,000 passengers per hour per direction, and the claim is that it can handle 25,000 pphpd, but these figures are hard to verify at best, and considered unlikely by other experts. Rather than design a network that would encourage multiple interchanges among surface transit, a large number of bus routes are funnelled into SkyTrain, thus inflating the ridership figures. This means that a high number of riders have to use some other form of transit either to get to or from Skytrain, and when the system breaks--as will happen more often as time goes by--"bus bridges" have to be scrambled in order to deal with the lack of a network system. The more obvious flaw is what is known by some as "gadgetbahn." SkyTrain, also known as MOVIA, is an orphan technology that no one wants--except TransLink. The major builders world-wide have examined and rejected the technology as being far too expensive to build and maintain. Of the 8 sytems built, one is on life support, and one has already been scrapped. The Broadway subway (extension) looks like it will cost about $530 Million / km for the hole in the ground, with a whopping great bill for upgrading (estimated by some at $3 Billion!) control systems in order to make the system internally compatible. Cue the musical: "There may be trouble ahead...."
If there’s no night service I buy a car… …And if I buy a car I’m not going to take transit in the day because I’m trying to extract value from my car I think it’s super under appreciated
Accessible Canada Act (ACA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be expanded to not only include accessibility, but also AVAILABILITY. No one should be treated as a second class citizen if they don’t own a car.
ADA regulations mandate providing paratransit within 3/4 miles of fixed-route bus service. The guarantees on that are poor (like next-day scheduling), but it's still expensive enough to push various cities into not providing fixed-route buses at all. (If you're lucky they provide something like route-deviation buses, which can intrinsically meet ADA requirements, at the expense of reliable service for everyone. If you're unlucky, no bus period.) Note this is an unfunded mandate: the federal government says you have to do X, without providing the means to do so. Much like the mandate to provide emergency room care to anyone who needs it.
@@mindstalk ADA and ACA rightly provide autonomy for people with specific needs, even though they are a small minority of the population. They are just examples of what can be done if perspectives change. I am suggesting that metropolitan areas should create public transit that enables anyone to live without a car - autonomy from cars. As it is now, transportation is very lopsided in favor of cars.
@@barryrobbins7694 ADA has done good things, but as it is it can end up punishing people who try to do good things. Like the unfunded mandate for paratransit. And hey, ADA doesn't require accessibility in cars and houses, only transit and apartments.
@@mindstalk The idea is to end car dependency for EVERYONE in a metropolitan area. Owning a car in a metropolitan area should be an option not a requirement. As it is now, too many people don’t have a viable option to driving a car. Car infrastructure automatically gets funding, but one has to fight to get improvements to public transit. The budget considerations are backwards considering the economic efficiency of good public transit. Not having to drive should be the priority.
Transit systems should really not be paying for themselves but the city should have a fee/tax on income made by businesses around the transit stops. Would generate less pressure to only serve areas with high ridership, cause the transit would benefit remote areas too. I hate how my village is treated by HVV (transit from Hamburg) and the bus comes only every hour or less. Stops service except morning and afternoon and is very unreliable and uncomfortable. Hence I go by car, I would rather take the transit but its so inconvenient that it's unappealing
This is particularly poignant for Louisville, as our city has taken a hatchet to our bus network due to "low ridership". Our buses are hideous - flat gray or blue paint with "TARC" stickers on the back windows. Our bus stops are often just placards nailed to utility poles - shelters are rare. The routes are inefficient. And yet leaders wonder why nobody wants to take the bus.
One wonders whether it is because of them being out-of-touch or a deliberate effort to undercut something to justify cutting or privatizing it.
@@annoyed707 I honestly think that our city and state leaders subscribe to the notion that "transit is just for poor people to get to jobs until they have enough money to afford their own cars", and that any argument to the contrary that favors transit expansion is akin to a handout.
@@MinecraftWarrior22 I've felt as though the meetings are deliberately scheduled to have as little input from the general public as possible. Weekdays at 2pm? People are at work, and they're not going to call off work to attend a TARC board meeting.
As a former Louisville resident, Tarc is horrendous
Shelters seem trivial until you have to wait for a bus in the rain!
If cities are serious about getting young people on transit, they need late night/24hr services on weekends at least. Going out to bars/clubbing and knowing that you never have to worry about expensive Ubers or designated drivers makes the night infinitely more fun.
I was in Montreal last winter and we’d be catching the last bus back from Saint-Laurent Blvd out to Hochelaga at 3:30 am! Such an easy experience and there was even a stop 50 ft from our front door.
The effects on reducing drunk driving is also massive.
. . . And it needs to be USABLE night service. Here in Boston, they have a few times experimented with "Owl" service that consists of buses running on a few routes mostly substituting for the rapid transit and light rail lines, charging a premium fare and not accepting any transit passes, and running only on Friday nights and Saturday nights, making it useless to most people who actually work late. In other words, they designed it ONLY for the partygoers, and they designed it to fail, which it always did. So if I'm coming home late from work, I have to resort to Fully Endogenous Express Transport. (Actually now I often have to do this before the end of service, because the regular service has gotten so bad, starting even before the pandemic.)
I wonder if some of this isn’t just a matter of moralism. Like, the people who make these policies don’t approve of that lifestyle and think that young people should be home sleeping, or reading the Bible, or something like that, instead of being out partying. Of course if that was the case (or if they really thought about it) they should ban cars too, since cars can get you anywhere, at any time of day or night, without needing someone else to implicitly approve of your choice by providing a service.
@@jasonlescalleet5611 It could be, but then why do they want to make things more difficult for people who work late in a hospital?
Absolutely, and once you are on transit at night and weekends . . .
Does Montreal have a pulse night network? That is one with timed connections. This is a good model for night services that are at a low frequency, but sufficient that nightriders are not high and dry. Prague has a pulse night network.
Demand responsive night services could also be provided where there are not enough night journeys to serve for night services to depend on fixed routes.
A pro about night service is to reduce drink driving rates. There is not a great deal of research for this but it makes sense to give options for those who drink.
Exactly. This applies also for stadiums or other event venues. If you can take transit home, the football games become much more fun
Bingo! The CFL was really good at offering a free ride to and from the game on transit here in Edmonton as a way to curb drunk driving. Seemed to have done the trick since you never really hear of pile ups on or off the field after Elks games.. Especially with a 0-5 record!
But also because driving is even less enjoyable at night!
I remember a few years ago that GO Transit was free on New Year's eve for precisely this reason.
Had a good example of a small change to transit that made a big difference recently. My wife need to travel to a hospital in a larger town every couple of months for a check-up on her eyes, and the dilating droplets they give her means she cannot drive back from there for a few hours. So normally, I'd drive her to the hospital for the appointments, hang around or do some shopping, then drive her back. There is a bus service from near our house that goes directly to the town, but it stopped in the town centre and required a change to another bus to get to and from the hospital, which is tricky when your vision is limited. Very recently, they extended that bus service so it continues on to the hospital and turns around there. This was a massive benefit and means she can now take a single-seat bus ride to and from the hospital without stumbling around with blurry eyes trying to change buses, and without me having to take time out of my working day or even start the car at all. Small change at minimal cost, major win, at least one return car journey completely eliminated.
The value of one seat rides is absolutely quite high!
Great, personally i would still drive my sister, wife, gf or a friend as its a medical condition and i want them to be safe. But yea what if i am out of town or busy or our vehicle is broken down
Night service is so important. It reduces drunk driving, provides a major boost for nightlife areas, and helps out people who work later hours have an affordable option to get home. Also, if you make transit easier for people to go to a bar, for example, or other non-normal hour activities, they are much more likely to consider using transit more during peak times. So while it may cost more per rider to have good night service, its benefits outweigh the cost and it actually augments regular hour service as well.
If they are at a low frequency (but sufficient that riders are not high and dry) then a pulse night network (like Prague has) is a good way to run it. And then there are demand responsive night services if there are not enough journeys to serve late at night for night services to depend on fixed routes.
Problem is, CEOs and managers of public transport companies never ever ride any of those trains themselves, so they couldn't bother less. In Germany, oftentimes we don't even have air conditioning because no one of the managers care at all. Quite contrary, if they spend less, they get a bonus for increasing revenue (generally speaking). If they would use it themselves, they would never even think a second of ordering busses or streetcars without ac.
I saw a study out of Australia on increasing bus service to low-income areas, and it found that a bus only needed to move *six people* per hour to provide a net economic benefit. With how low the bar potentially is for a positive public benefit, yeah it's absolutely worth going the extra mile to provide the little details and extra services that make even the least-sexy transit a better experience.
huh, that's crazy good value
Do you have the name of this study?
Study link?
Study link?
Or better, a title, as YT seems to be allergic to links in comments...
I think China is one of the few countries that build their transit project regardless of capacity and stuff. Many metro lines (especially in Chongqing) are built along wasteland and farmland where no one would want to use transit. However these places ended up being a very transit orientated suburbs after a few years which makes the otherwise nonsense station to be quite awesome. (This happens in Japan too I think)
It also happened in London.
Happened in the US in the 1800's too. Rich company buys land. Build a rail line to make the land valuable. Profit. Same with Japan kinda. JR owns all the land around the stations. That's how JR is profitable. Build cities around transit. It actually works.
@@whyarehumans Yea, sadly as time went on, this practice has slowly disappeared and now it's mostly a practice in Asia now, especially in Japan and China
Well I mean, you can't build with zero regard, but if you integrate transport and development transit going in first is fine!
Metropolitan areas don’t wring their hands over roads and highways. A road is built even if it has low traffic.
Very sad and very true... The money invested is often never worth its perceived savings of time since induced demand just clogs up that road empty road too... The only way to guarantee empty roads is to put people onto transit or bikeways and for pedestrians proper walkways... Even if you drive, you should always want better transit to take people out of their cars and out of your way... I don't get how people who never use transit, don't want it.. Then again I also don't know how the working class would ever vote for a greasy orange billionaire... ;-)
Seriously, it's infuriating! Such a brain-dead double-standard.
For sure, and a lot of road infrastructure is actively harmful
In the old days, when they had local trolley or Interurban service, night running was often enhanced by hauling revenue, or freight. It was often hauled during the day, as needed. Today, you could probably fill many trains cargo cars with just packages from Amazon for local drop off and delivery.
I grew up in NYC . Where I live now only has bus service . If it runs at night , i don't know. I assumed all my life that everyone had night service. Why not? When in the Navy we went into Chicago to a club in So. Chicago to see Nancy Wilson and Flip Willson. The show was over at 1 AM . We walked a block and go on the bus.
Until i began watching your fabulous show I believed two wrong things.1) you can stay out to all hours no problem, just have to wait for bus or subway a bit longer .
2) New York City and maybe Toronto were the only ones with subways.
I must admit I was ohhh- dumb , to the facts. Im continually amazed by what im learning about transit from your show, and the world. Thanks. Oh ,yes, my age ,(81), might account for my misconcepsions .😂😂
Boston and Chicago have had subways longer than you've been alive.
Your night bus example was spot on. The basis of strong ridership is having good service, which means balancing geographic coverage, service hours, and frequency. I think transit agencies and the cities they serve sometimes "miss the forest for the trees". Ridership and coverage aren't an either/or but a starting point to realize community goals and values like connecting students to campus, discouraging drinking and driving, or connecting transportation hubs.
To the last point I really relate, as trains here in Germany (or at least my train route) stop at 1am till 5 am. I've had times when I wanted to go to parties in my nearby city but can't because I'd be uncomfortable not being able to go home at night, and even on long distance trips I have to make sure that I arrive before 11pm (as delays could make me wait hours on stations whilst there's nothing to do in the cities).
And that really can make the trip a lot less enjoyable too!
Its the same in the Netherlands. On weekdays my typical Intercity route from my study city to city close to me last leaves around midnight, on weekends the last one goes at 0.30. I so wished there was also one at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 am before returning to the typical schedule... i dont think night transit has to be half hourly like the Dutch rail network during the day, but at least having the ability to get home and not have to push through to 5-6am to catch the first train would be a lifesaver.
Few weeks back they for a special event in the city, so NS ran one more at 1.30 also, and that was such a lifesaver. Still, its not fun to know that if that train is cancelled you are stuck. Thats also the issue, you dont want to catch the last train, as if that doesnt show up youre stuck.
Arriva recently started running some night trains on select routes that are actually ran by NS during the day, which is funny, but really it should just be something the NS does, but if NS doesnt do it, kudos to Arriva for tapping into that and hopefully they expand those services. Those are moreso routes from Schiphol Airport, for people flying in the night... which is also crazy, if you land in Schiphol in the night you can only really get to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and other few Randstad cities but not further into the country.
There's another dimension to this, and I didn't realize how big it was until recently. I live in Warsaw, a city of about two million people, so not exactly a cosy village. One day I realized that I, a 40+ years old person, don't actually know the entire city. There are whole districts I've never been to.
I begun to wonder why and quickly realized it's two things:
- when moving, I always pick places with good transit, because I don't have (and don't want) a car
- all my friends are people who live in places with good transit, and while some of them have cars, they don't use them much
Did I ever pick friends based on their transit preferences? Of course not. But I'm willing to bet transit choices correlate with lifestyle choices that make me and the other person a better match. And also: since I rely on transit, it's naturally easier to become friends with someone who also lives near good transit.
The bottom line is this: selective transit segregates people. Places with good transit grow apart from those without it, not just in terms of connectivity, but also in terms of social and cultural links. In Warsaw you can see this when you look at election results maps. Statistically speaking, people who live away from transit vote differently! I mean, they can vote whoever they like as far as I'm concerned, but the fact that people with different life choices are much less likely to meet each other, because they are literally NOT each other's neighbours - that's just dangerous.
In Boston, the Red and Blue lines don't have a direct connection. I lived in Cambridge on the Red Line, and was unusual among my friends for having ever taken the Blue Line to see what was out there.
Another thing to have in mind when cities consider having night transportation services is the overall security rate or perception of the city, because it is well known that security levels tend to lower during night hours, and that is a very important thing to consider not only by transit administrators but also by the users of said night services.
I live in Canada and the perception argument is one of the main reasons why I'm so excited for VIA's new Siemens rollout. They're capable of being faster but on our unoptimized tracks, they probably won't nearly reach their maximum. But, they're beautiful on the inside and outside, and someone seeing one pass by while on the highway might have a change of heart by seeing something so new and nice, compared to the ancient rolling stock from the 70's.
It might give them the impression that Canada is trying to improve its rail service, or even just remind them that it exists at all, and that might help shift the tides. Every time I see a new set ride by in the distance on my way home, it leaves a way bigger impression than the old ones ever did. It helps defeat the age old "trains are ancient technology" argument.
Exactly! I had this discussion with my physio. She grew up in rural and semi-remote Canada where transit just isn't a thing. Now living in Toronto she needs to occasionally travel for physio sports contracts - cool. She was telling me that going to Ottawa at such and such a time was tiring and she didn't know if she wanted to keep doing it; but clearly thinking about it as a driver. To which I replied why not just take the train? The new ones are beautiful, and while the service isn't super fast it's pretty much as quick a the car or faster and she could rest, chill, even nap -- she simply hadn't considered it, just hadn't occurred to her.
The more the "beautiful experience" can be seen as a benefit, people will think about it and ditch the car.
I agree with frequency driving ridership and trust in the system and I think it's an interesting point to think about the appearance of transit vehicles and how that can effect the perception of how often they drive past. For example if 10 bright yellow or orange busses go past the window while you're out at a restaurant do you notice more and think "that's a lot of busses" VS 10 boring grey busses going past.
God as a Danish guy the fact that all of these little things are needed to make transit good needs to be said. Here, our politicans and other officials are hellbent on cost cutting and microscopic efficiency increases. Our buses may look alright on the outside but inside you wont find many creature comforts. Heck they often try to downsize buses and have almost exclusively 12m (40ft) buses in their tenders cause in their logic, because there are so many suppliers of 12m buses, the bidders to operate the routes can get lower prices for the vehicles, costing the transit agency less, whereas with larger or smaller buses, the market supply is lower, resulting in higher cost per vehicle.
And one place we especiall fall behind is our stations and transit hubs. Many are straight up awful with very few passenger facilities and basically nowhere to sit and wait for your bus or train, and often exposing passengers completely to the elements!
Combine all of this together with a extremely conveluted fare system and the high ticket prices which here are twice that of most North American cities and several European cities too, and you get a system which many think is very poor value and which ultimately leads to Copenhagen having a modal share which even American cities like the Twin Cities manage to beat.
Ultimately one cant run a good transit system by looking at just individual lines or even just the existance of lines in themselves. You need to be much more hollistic about it. How are passengers gonna get to the transit stop, is it safe for them to do so, is it gonna be a pleasant and or safe space they can wait at, is the vehicle gonna be comfortable and clean, are the schedules easy to follow, can transfers be made without making passengers uncomfortable, etc etc.
The most infuriating thing though is when you know all of the issues can be solved and that the funding to solve them exists, but is spent in other ways that are infuriating. Like the 3.5 billion canadian dollars (or about 18 billion Danish kroner) annually that the government spends on a tax rebate for commutes which inherrently in design benefits car drivers and car dependency most. One could double the amount of departures on all bus lines in the country and slash all ticket prices in half for just half of that sack of money! The other half could go for stuff like much improved train and bus stations, or overnight services, or anything else, and simplifying ticket systems.
Going after tiny savings in the name of "efficiency" is usually not very efficient!
Went to work on a shift I hadn't worked before at a hospital I don't go to often only to realise at 10pm after my shift in the middle of car stroad hell that there's wasn't going to be any transport home. Live in Melbourne and at the time I thought the night services that I had caught in the past going clubbing ran all week, oh how wrong I was.
If you cut low ridership routes, you lose their service as feeders to the high ridership routes, which then lose ridership.
As for attractiveness of transit, the first priority is to get reliable service with decent frequency. Boston's MBTA is failing in these basics so much (and getting worse in the last few years even before the pandemic) that even during the day I often have to go to work (and even more often come back from work at night) using Fully Endogenous Express Transport.
I can really relate to your annecdote around Night services.I live in Düsseldorf in Germany, a City of around 600.00 people. We have S-Bahn and regional trains for the outer suburbs and trams, Stadtbahnen and buses for inner city service. And thankfully, we have an extensive night service system on the weekend. Some Stadtbahn lines travel half hourly and for routes without Stadtbahn service, there is a big network of night buses. They even form 15 min frequencies on core routes. And let me tell you: They are FULL. I’m always quite impressed how many people use them. Sure, they take a little longer than normal routes during the day, but they are the reason many people can go out, enjoy a nice drink or some beers in the old town and don’t have to worry about a 30 € Uber or taxi ride. I love this so much and always miss it in other cities, even some German cities. Yes, it’s a luxury by comparison, but it’s really a quality of life aspect here in the city!
Do you have a pulse night network on weekends? As as German, you might have heard of a pulse timetable as a taktfahrplan.
@@Myrtone yes, our whole system runs on a „Taktfahrplan“. The night network is additionally timed to connect to certain Stadtbahn-routes and S-Bahn and regional express trains at major stations, so that they kind of make up for the low headwaves at night. And the services are often very well used, which in my opinion shows how important the night service is!
San Diego just debuted open payment ahead of Comic Con. MTS was losing several million annually in fare revenue due to a cumbersome app. Open payment will circumvent this and attract tons of occasional riders who would otherwise give up after missing the train while fumbling with an app!
Didn’t know about this, how exciting!
Toronto's night buses - humorously, but not-really-accurately called the Vomit Rocket - has been around forever and I love it. When I was younger and slightly more foolish than I still am, I did some late night Film Festival viewings. I never gave getting home much thought because I knew it wasn't going to be an issue regardless of whether I made the last train or needed the night bus, it was all pretty much the same for "just getting home".
It's funny the impact of how I saw the city from that point on having only just moved to Toronto a few years before. It really cemented the place as a 24 hour lifestyle whether I actually stayed out late - which I don't much any more - or not. It *felt* bigger, felt like I could do anything whenever I felt like it and the city was there with services that other people use to live it.
Great transit footage from across the globe in this video!
Shoutout to my good friend Michael Kranz from the Metro Transit Council! He's the senior head of TOD there, and in addition to being a total city nerd (pardon the pun), he's a great guy, and knows his way around an urbanist content creator! He recommended this book to me, and I intend to read it.
Hunt Club Rd in Ottawa stands out to me. High traffic street with all sorts of stores that gets one bus an hour... and it doesn't even go down the street itself for most of the route.
I have a personal experience with this. A bus that I take changes from every 10 minutes to every 30 abruptly at 6:30 pm. I have taken a few buses after that (usually around 7-7;30) and they are all very crowded. I think they should change it gradually to every 15 minutes first and then 30.
I was shocked how shutdown Tokyo's system was at night and it definitely caused some anxiety. It was unexpected from such a transit paradise.
An interesting study from my region would be the RNN line 651. It's essentially the only line which belongs to Nieder-Olm (a town SW of Mainz) in that it never leaves the borders and said line is notable run by minibusses when every other line is served by regional (640, 652, 653, 656) or city (66) busses and it also runs hourly (every other line, sans 656, runs half-hourly on weekdays).
It arguably only exists to serve the Goldberg neighbourhood (since it's the only line which serves it while the nearest stops from there are half a kilometre apart) where busses drive from the railway station to Goldberg and then back on saturday, though they take a more circular route (through the Weinbergring, well served by the 66 otherwise) on weekdays (no busses on sundays, though this applies to most busses except 640 and 652).
Ridership is, expectedly, relatively low, but it's still some sort of lifeline for the most isolated dwellings of Nieder-Olm.
The nice thing about Japan is if you work late or go out partying, they have very cheap "pod" hotels you can stay in, and the larger cities have taxi service that will send a driver out to drive your car home for you as a passenger.
The late night service is really so underrated, especially in smaller cities. I go everywhere by bus or train, but if I want to go to the cinema and watch a movie that starts at like 8 or 9 pm, I have to take the car - otherwise, I would have to wait almost an hour for the train or not get home at all.
So not only do they have less riders on the earlier service, they also have more cars in the city center that wouldn't need to be there.
I want to ❤ this video. The example of design was brilliant.
I remember when I got stranded in one of the most infamous neighbourhoods in Naples late one night because their Metro stopped running counterclockwise after 10:20pm. Came as such a shock to me because here in Edmonton, I take it for granted that I can study on campus until midnight and still be able to catch a train home because the LRT runs until 1 am.
I used to study in a provincial capital and while I didn't expect a great public transport system like at home I certainly thought it would be decent, granted I was staying in a regionally important city of 100000 people and not some tiny backwater town. I should have checked the bus schedule ahead of time because the particular line to my campus (not the main campus but still) didn't run past 7pm during my first year, so the first time we had late classes I won a surprise 30 minutes evening walk to the train station.
i live in a fairly small city (you probably wouldnt even call it a city) and we have at least hourly trams all night. so when i was in paris and wanted to go somewhere at 3 am i was quite shocked to find the metro station closed. didnt even consider that it would stop running at night. sure, there are still many buses, but instead i decided to walk from the 20th arrondissement to the eiffel tower, so basically across paris. all in the middle of the night. one of my most memorable experiences
You could make a video about the Danish Flextrafik system. It is like a taxi/uber of the elderly, but it runs buses, so that it can pick up several people on the same trip.
This is an alternative to buses in rural areas. You have to book the trip in advance, so that the system can calculate an optimal route.
Seattle stops it's hyper expensive airport right rail at night because clearly nobody flies early or late 😂
It is suprising that more airport rail services don't at least run once every half hour or hour over night as they often do in Germany.
In the Greater Boston area, transit runs pretty late, specifically the subways but I think some of the busses to. The subway specifically has helped me get to a club in the downtown area, one the really only gets going pretty late at night, meaning there is a pretty good chance that I would not be going there. Their also some other clubs father out that I've considered going to but have sometimes hesitate specifically because I'm not sure how late some of the bus routes are. Essentially the late-night serves help create business for these places. And while I can not say exactly how much I will note that while their services where definitely sparser they are on the day, I am not the only one taking them. Also, that's not even considering more necessary things. Hospitals have to be open at night so having services for those who need them either to for services or a job is important, especially sense, you might be in a condition where you don't necessarily need and ambulance but are not if the best condition to drive. Have transit services means you are not taking way the ambulance who it is more necessarily for. Also a lot of business stay open pretty late, and that provides all kinds of convinces, one thing that probably help this, is the ability for their employees to get home, even those who do not have a car. Finally, it is worth noting that driving at night is at least somewhat more dangerous because if it is dark, plus a lot of accidents happen when people are drive despite being tired including from being out at late.
in vienna, currently there are 2 big operations. upgrade of U2, construction of U5, and the maintenance of the S-bahn main line (stammstrecke).
and everything still works, with one main artery currently cut and another one shortened.
so, you need to be able to upgrade and maintain your system without everything grinding to a halt. that's a very important thing, but also quite invisible if everything works.
I think this is likely one of your best videos. These are som very novel thoughts, good on RM :)
I had considered buying a house in Trenton, NJ (it was near work) but backed away because SEPTA’s regional rail no longer runs late at night. That’s not to mention how frustrating it is that Philly’s subways don’t run 24 hours on the weekends anymore.
The existence of lower ridership transit routes also affects the perception of a transit system! Even if a route isn't necessarily the most used, when someone is looking at using transit more frequently, they'll be a lot more likely to choose to take transit if the map they look at has more routes. Even if every user might not use every single route, it gives confidence in the system and lessens the "I can't use transit for this route and since I sold my car I'm screwed" anxiety that most people have, especially those who don't typically take transit
The key word is in your title: “Service.” People prioritize clean, safe, reliable and frequent service. Good evening and late night service is important in attracting riders who might otherwise drive into congested areas because of the possibility they might be late coming home. Attractive vehicles is a consideration, but should be limited to 1-2% of vehicle cost. Don’t let planners get carried away with novel designs. Standardization is important to keep costs down and expand transit.
I haven't read Walker's book yet, but I have read some of his blog posts and his talk about revamping Houston's bus system. Actually that's a good example: like many US cities, Houston had a coverage-oriented radial network of infrequent bus routes. Lots of places had "bus service" but you had to wait and many trips were much longer than driving. With almost the same amount of resources, the new system became a grid of higher frequency bus lines, and much higher ridership, serving many more people and making a bigger reduction of driving.
Ridership _and_ coverage might be ideal, but US transit typically has very limited resources, and a very bad starting configuration. That's the sort of thing I've seen Walker write about.
Or put another way: yeah, Walker and other advocates _know_ that ridership isn't constant and is a function of attractiveness (mostly frequency). Which is why they advocate concentrating limited resources on lines you can make frequent, and thus attractive to ridership. If you want night service and suburban coverage as well, at some point you simply need more resources.
(I think in the end Houston did find some extra money to keep up coverage.)
Night service as loss leader or confidence insurance is a good point. Though some places might ask whether it should be provided as expensive fixed route buses, low-frequency fixed routes buses, or some sort of flexible/on-demand service.
I'd also add that just looking at individual lines and their potential has the danger of neglecting network effects.
Yes, running a line from a city to a smaller town might not have a lot of riders. But let's say you also connect that smaller town further to some villages nearby. Now you feed everyone from those villages into the system, which connects through the town as a secondary transportation hub to the larger nearby city, and perhaps even further onto a highspeed train network, where suddenly those few village bus riders generate commercially significant ridership. And perhaps in return you now get travel between those destinations too, weekend travelers that want to relax outside the city etcpp.
If you get a network as complete as (everyone's favorite example) Switzerland, then almost any route suddenly is worth it, because it all feeds into the larger network that's already there, generating extra trips in all sorts of directions. But to get there, you can't just cherry pick the biggest fruits, you must design a functioning, multi-centric network.
Perhaps allowing workers to commute from places with more affordable housing, easing the strain on housing in the larger center, especially for the hybrid jobs with a few trips a week to the office.
Mostly unconnected to this video, but I just returned to the UK from a week's trip to the Netherlands, riding on a ton of different transit over there. It was mostly fantastic, but one thing I felt that was really bad was the way you have to tap in AND out on every tram and bus. This made getting on and off quite stressful (especially as I had 2 kids with me and had to do their tickets too) and I would guess also increased dwell times. I personally find it much better using systems like the Croydon Tramlink, Manchester Metrolink or DLR, where you touch in and out at the station/stop. I don't know if you've ever made a video about this, but I think it could be quite an interesting topic.
I agree. I found that system to be quite annoying too. But to be fair, coming from a place with an honor system (but random checks) I'm not a big fan of any system where I have to check in and check out at all because I'm not used to it and terribly scatterbrained at times. 😅 I've had annual tickets for my home city for years and a ticket for my whole country for the last two of those, so most of the time I don't even have to think about buying a ticket. It's really convenient.
@@juulian1306 It would be interesting to see stats on how ticket barriers affect revenue and fare dodging. I suspect they do work, but it's interesting how some countries (like Germany) have actively decided not to use them.
1:36 ah yes, the beautiful Belmont flyover on the Boston brown line
My bad
At the beginning of the video, the silver subway cars you label as being from Boston are actually in Chicago.
Can't forget that high level of service can increase ridership by encouraging more development in the area.
Heard you give Jerry Agar of Toronto's NewsTalk 1010 an education earlier today, was a great segment to listen to!
Happy someone heard!
The footage at 1:30 ish says boston, but it looks a lot like chicago where the red and brown lines split.
It is belmont station on the CTA
Yep that's Belmont in Chicago.
Services which get less riders but expand the network are important because people don't just travel to one place all the time, they also visit their aunt once a month, go to a special store for that one part they need to fix their dishwasher once a year, whatever. If they need a car for most of those infrequent trips they will get one and are more likely to drive on other trips, too.
The "late night service anxiety" dilema that transit faces reminds me of the "range anxiety" problem that EVs face.
Range anxiety is worse because you would presumably have to leave your car there and come back for it later. Late night service anxiety just means you might have to pay for a cab or Uber home.
greetings from Hamburg!
Living on Montreal's west island I only have the 354 night bus, it is not ideal but manageable with its 45min headway, and it is convenient that it stops within 50m of my apartment, but it takes me to downtown Montreal, not to other west island suburbs. So, some of the time the night bus is great if I am going to or coming from the city. The REM (once it opens) will be closed from 1am to 5am so that will help to some degree.
6:34 Imagine how dead Toronto's nightlife would be without the TTC or GO transit. All those people on King St West, The Jays Game, the Leafs or Raptors, 95% are coming with transit. Honestly besides the obvious traffic benefit, it's a public safety benefit since more people have a safe alternative than drinking&driving. It completely adds to the city's nightlife, and for that alone it should be considered an economic multiplier that influences decision makers.
Great video also at 1:40 that is a video of CTA-Chicago not Boston
@@JimBones1990 Belmont junction is too iconic not to haha
Yes
great public transit at night is a subsidie for your nightlife. money not spend on taxis is spend on drinks.
Night transit isn't just for partygoers and clubbing. For people who work late night or early morning shifts, it's a necessity. Also, imagine that you had to go to the emergency room. You were able to take transit there, but by the time you're discharged, it's 2 in the morning and you're in no condition to drive. How are you supposed to get home?
Uber
From reading the comments it appears my city of Niagara Falls isn’t the only one with 1 stop an hour bus stop. The problem now is because residential and commercial are so far apart for a lot of people, trying to design new transit routes could be a problem.
Vancouver's cruddy night buses are very much a deterrent to depending on transit there. We should agitate for all future skytrain expansion to be designed to accommodate 24 hr service, whether or not Translink has any immediate plans for such a service. This will make it easier to eventually get that 24 hr service implemented. It's an automated system, ferchistsakes!
Nice shot of a tram in St Kilda (Melbourne) at the end.
I have the luck to live in a condensed city where about 19 day lines and 1 night one (by Spanish standards) just do the work. And quite efficiently, since the system managed to move almost 25 million passenger on a city of 230 000 people last year. On the not so bright side, I’d say the fleet has grown old. Most of the buses were here already by 1992; they only received AC this year! Also, the University line and Marineda line (Marineda’s a shopping centre) do seem crowded enough for me to justify a light rail. They go through dense neighborhoods and they’re crowded lines, even if they use bendy buses
1:41 "I fear not the man who has practiced 10k kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10k times". -Bruce Lee
As a guy that works after hours shifts, I would love and use transit if it was available to me and the other night owls.
Ffom an industry POV, you need a time period for maintenance, with increasing amplitudes, that makes the period for that highly needed maintenance shorter and shorter. It's one of the reasons why TLCs, Total Line Closures, are becoming more common. I still support later and earlier trains, especially where the last service is at 9 or 10 pm already, but i would not make full night service by rail a priority.
Disclaimer, i live in a city of 1 million people, with 11 in the whole country. Some lines have the last train of rhe day pull out of the station at 9 pm, i fully agree that that's too late. I think a late night service around 11-12 is the bare minimum, and around the larger cities, it should be closer to 1 am. But I would not have an issue when those late services were a bus, and full rail service the night through is much, much lower on my priority list.
Other elements you mentioned, absolutely. Quiet carriages, family cars with a small children's corner, (USB) sockets... are some small things that often don't cost much, but make such a difference to the user. I'll add waiting infrastructure to the list, and clear signalling (I'm still in love with Barcelona's floor painted arrows to neighbouring bus stops).
All-night train service does seem rare, with NYC assisted by its wealth of local+express routes, allowing it to have local-only night service on the track not being maintained that night. Chicago has a few all-night lines too (Red, Blue), I'm not sure how it pulls it off.
I think it's a perfect compromise, like here in Berlin, to run 24h train service during the weekends and before holidays, and run night service with busses all other nights. And you'd run your night train service with reduced frequency, that still lets you do a lot of train maintenance during those nights, and track maintenance during the week.
I regularly get off work after midnight. My bus stops running at 9. Need I say more?
I recently was sent a video- Hobart, buses versus rail. It relates to a debate between public interest groups and the state government as to which is more suitable to Australia’s island state’s largest city, a bus way or a light rail line. The corridor will run from the remaining single heavy rail line to the northern suburbs.
An interesting news story produced by our ABC channel which highlights the government position of a busway as a cost saving measure and the public’s call for a rapid transit line for comfort and convenience. My only question here, and should be noted I’ve never been there, if the rail option is adopted that wouldn’t a meadium rail train be more suitable than a light rail system as proposed for the future needs of this smallish city.
I think the basic conclusion I have is that public transit is best when it's either in government hands or very heavy regulated if in private hands. The minute you let the private sector have control they will not prioritize routes or things that are not profitable. Something not mentioned is elderly people who rely on transit in non core areas. Where I live that makes up a big share of the ridership. In my opinion transit is basically like healthcare. It's something that works better when everyone chips in and is aware of the fact that it's simply better as not for profit.
Most public transit these days _is_ government-run, and it's the government that is cutting back marginal lines.
@@mindstalk depends where you live. Not in my city. And basically that's the fault of people for not getting out and pressuring the government to do more.
If it were privatized you'd have absolutely zero say or influence over cuts.
Good looking vehicles really give the impression that you are investing in and you care about the transit, even if the vehicles are actually already 30 years old (see London). I live in Munich now, and they „renovated“ some of the older trains, giving them LCD screens and automated announcements, but they didn’t renovate any of the interior. So now you have trains with LCD screens and chipping paint/fake-wood-wallpaper, which, unfortunately is not a good look imo.
Yeah, but a frequent ugly service will beat the pants off an infrequent pretty service.
@@mindstalk of course, and a pretty frequent service is better than an ugly frequent service.
And a service with better investment will always beat a service with lower investment
@@bobi7152 Yeah, but you might not have the choice of "pretty frequent" at the same price.
Especially in the US, there's frequently a "buy American" mandate when using federal or state money, so a transit agency that wanted to use foreign vehicle designs would have to come up with a lot more of its own money.
We can call that bad policy, but it still is current policy, so a US transit agency is prudent to buying whatever's provided by US manufacturers, which "frequent" meaning "buying cheap vehicles" meaning "buying the current standard".
Speaking of night buses, NYC is a lot weaker there than one might expect of a transit city.
Now, I'm not saying that there should necessarily be a bunch of overnight-exclusive bus routes (or overnight-exclusive alternate routes for day routes) like in some cities, but between the abysmal frequencies (most of the 24-hour routes run hourly overnight and tend to lack assistance from other routes) and spotty coverage (as an example, there's a huge swath of Brooklyn that only sees D and N service overnight, both of which cover only a portion of that entire area), it makes overnight travel much harder than it needs to be.
Night service is essential, especially to the airport, or night life areas
A big IT hub city called bengaluru in south india, it does not have metro connection to the airport, so the govt. runs "rapid" bus (Only very few stops, but yea bad traffic) to the airport those are 15-30 min in the day and every hour in the night
And i have travlled on them in the day, evening, night everytime
Accessability and networking are also instrumental in making public transit worthwhile. Ridership is crucial but does not highlight the greatness of services.
At 1:42 that vid is the Belmont flyover in Chicago not Boston
To be fair, everything in Vancouver closes at 9 pm anyway 😅
@@Skip6235 Would they stay open longer if night transit took people there?
So true... I've never seen a more banal Canadian city and I'm from Deadmonton!
I live in Yaletown with a clear view of Granville Ave. Trust me, nothing closes at 9pm. That’s nonsense.
I’d love a video on Dublin!
Good point about the aesthetic of transit vehicles! I wonder if that's a factor in the common perception in North America that transit is for poor people.
Pretty sure that’s Chicago 1:37
At the very least in 2024 cities of a certain size... I.e. 1,000,000 probably should run 24/7/365 at least in some rudimentary form especially if you have a rail network since train stations tend to act as defacto meeting places/emergency shelter/landmarks in each neighbourhood. And at each station you should be able to find basic services like bathrooms, snack machines and security/police if need be. I can't tell you how many times I've canceled plans because I'd have to access one of the worst/unsafe/unmanned LRT stations in Edmonton, Coliseum... Funnily enough during K-Days which is on right now there's always a police and security presence which makes it feel really really different and safe and I'd even say people with children are fine to use it... Just not after July 31st... ;-)
Well more and more transitlines are beeing closed in my country because they don´t turn a profit. Like in my place busses are run by private companies, and they need to make money if not, they won´t run.
Transit doesn't just bring in fare revenue, it also raises land value and thus property taxes around good routes. Also this took me a while to understand but lots of public services aren't "profitable". Is a park with playground equipment and a baseball field profitable? Anyone can just use it for free! People have to maintain and take care of it, it's a money loser! Let's get rid of it!
As a Torontonian, I spend my winters in Melbourne Florida. They have a public bus system that has poor ridership, It is rare to see bus shelters at the stops and with the hot sun it only helps to discourage ridership.
Why does the name 'Dr Beeching' name come to mind?
At what point does cost recovery become so low the service should consider going fare-free? Major cities with high ridership can often recover 70% or more of the cost of transit from fares, but my midwestern town of 250k-ish only recovers 10% of the cost of the (incredibly bad) bus service from fares.
One problem with completely free transit is that in big cities and other areas with improperly managed homeless problems is that a lot of smelly, scary homeless people will ride them, scarying off the "normies", until anybody who has any other option stops taking it. The opposite of providing incentives to ride. Soon, the only people who be riding transit with be the homeless and others who have absolutely no other option.
@@Geotpf It's already like that with nominal fares. The price difference between $0 and $1.25 is not enough to have that effect.
Can I ask you a question Reece🧐🧐 ....what is the type of service for Singapore's bus system??...I've been wondering wether is it a spider web network or hub and spoke network cuz they've got like 20 bus interchange /terminals in their country alone and that's MASSIVE ✨✨
Night service is amazing for helping drunk people get home.
what I wouldn't do to have busses run later the 11pm in Durham region like it's actually awful
The amount of complainst Line 2 in Toronto gets about it's trains being old even though they're not that old is staggering. People moan to me all the time that they are 40 or 50 year old trains and that the city needs to buy more. The trains are barely 20 years old. They're fine. If they had a sleek design the perception of the system in the publics eye would be dramatically improved.
at 1:37 isn't that Chicago?
Nice❤❤
Long live the 19 Metrotown Nighttime Cultural Express!
Speed is not necessarily what riders want. They probably think of speed as a measure of quality and utility, because the automotive industry has taught them that. However, speed comes with a penalty: the faster a vehicle goes, the higher the elemental time value to stop it. That translates into fewer stops, often longer boarding times, and hte necessity of an additional form of transportation to get to the limited service.
Rather than speed, I would suggest that reliability is a more reliable measure.
Non-core features can make all the difference. Access is one of those, comfort is definitely another (after all, WHO fits into a 17" wide seat, spaced 29" apart?)
Aesthetics. It is widely assumed that sexy smooth aerodynamic shapes are the way to go. But how is this aesthetic achieved? With carbon fibre, fibreglass, resins, plastics--do you see a problem here? Most of us don't--again, thanks to the automotive industry. None of those materials can be recycled effectively, so we're offloading a problem on succeeding generations. The vehicles aren't environmentally sustainable.
One oddity I have discovered in pricing a wide range of light rail vehicles is that the cost of a conventional level-floor replica streetcar is considerably lower than a low-floor articulated vehicle, If low platforms are used, 100% of a level floor car is useable, as opposed to a fraction of that of the "low floor" model. Cost and function lead to different conclusions. So--why not keep it simple, AND make it beautiful?
You're quite right that we need to be open to creating a service that has value that might come in ways people can't predict or understand. One of those "unpredictables" might well be a night service that feels safe.
I've lived in Vancouver since 1982, and I have honestly never laid eyes on the elusive "night bus." It might not even exist for all I know.
I think frequency (unbunched) and direct routes are the top two requirements. (Direct meaning taking about the same distance as driving (or less, with modal filtering), rather than longer because of a hub and spoke system.)
If you can't do frequency, then yeah, reliable schedule becomes key. But reliability of any kind is hard if not impossible for buses in congested traffic.
@@mindstalk Precisely why I think that we need to look much closer at the mode of transit.
Ultimately the reason we tend not to look at light rail is because buses are effectively very heavily subsidized by public roads.
The relatively low speed of surface rail and high carrying capacity makes it potentially much more effecfive than other modes, in part because it is less likely that a secondary form of transit would be needed to access it.
The bigggest flaw in the planning of Vancouver's SkyTrain system is its extreme dependency on induced ridership, rather than network thinking.
@@mungmungie Can you expand on flaws? I thought SkyTrain was pretty awesome, though maybe the trains are too short for even higher ridership. The big flaw I heard of was that areas around the stations aren't reliably zoned to allow high density.
@@mindstalk The premise behind SkyTrain is to have sufficient ridership to justify it. Trouble is--it doesn't on its own. It depends on induced ridership to achieve the figures it does, and even that is difficult to verify since TransLink uses a measurement system no one else does. It has been inferred that its capacity is 20,000 passengers per hour per direction, and the claim is that it can handle 25,000 pphpd, but these figures are hard to verify at best, and considered unlikely by other experts.
Rather than design a network that would encourage multiple interchanges among surface transit, a large number of bus routes are funnelled into SkyTrain, thus inflating the ridership figures. This means that a high number of riders have to use some other form of transit either to get to or from Skytrain, and when the system breaks--as will happen more often as time goes by--"bus bridges" have to be scrambled in order to deal with the lack of a network system.
The more obvious flaw is what is known by some as "gadgetbahn." SkyTrain, also known as MOVIA, is an orphan technology that no one wants--except TransLink. The major builders world-wide have examined and rejected the technology as being far too expensive to build and maintain. Of the 8 sytems built, one is on life support, and one has already been scrapped. The Broadway subway (extension) looks like it will cost about $530 Million / km for the hole in the ground, with a whopping great bill for upgrading (estimated by some at $3 Billion!) control systems in order to make the system internally compatible.
Cue the musical: "There may be trouble ahead...."
@@mungmungie Interesting, though feeder bus routes are a common approach, not some Vancouver hack.
If there’s no night service I buy a car…
…And if I buy a car I’m not going to take transit in the day because I’m trying to extract value from my car
I think it’s super under appreciated
For most people that logic doesn't apply
This video could have been titled "why OC Transpo is terrible"
I like trains
Btw IF YOU LOST OR GIGGLING. 11:00PM OR 2300 hours not 11:00am. AM IS MID DAY 1100
Accessible Canada Act (ACA) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be expanded to not only include accessibility, but also AVAILABILITY. No one should be treated as a second class citizen if they don’t own a car.
ADA regulations mandate providing paratransit within 3/4 miles of fixed-route bus service. The guarantees on that are poor (like next-day scheduling), but it's still expensive enough to push various cities into not providing fixed-route buses at all. (If you're lucky they provide something like route-deviation buses, which can intrinsically meet ADA requirements, at the expense of reliable service for everyone. If you're unlucky, no bus period.)
Note this is an unfunded mandate: the federal government says you have to do X, without providing the means to do so. Much like the mandate to provide emergency room care to anyone who needs it.
@@mindstalk ADA and ACA rightly provide autonomy for people with specific needs, even though they are a small minority of the population. They are just examples of what can be done if perspectives change. I am suggesting that metropolitan areas should create public transit that enables anyone to live without a car - autonomy from cars. As it is now, transportation is very lopsided in favor of cars.
@@barryrobbins7694 ADA has done good things, but as it is it can end up punishing people who try to do good things. Like the unfunded mandate for paratransit. And hey, ADA doesn't require accessibility in cars and houses, only transit and apartments.
@@mindstalk The idea is to end car dependency for EVERYONE in a metropolitan area. Owning a car in a metropolitan area should be an option not a requirement. As it is now, too many people don’t have a viable option to driving a car. Car infrastructure automatically gets funding, but one has to fight to get improvements to public transit. The budget considerations are backwards considering the economic efficiency of good public transit. Not having to drive should be the priority.
@@barryrobbins7694 I _agree_. But how we approach that now is sub-ideal.
Transit systems should really not be paying for themselves but the city should have a fee/tax on income made by businesses around the transit stops. Would generate less pressure to only serve areas with high ridership, cause the transit would benefit remote areas too.
I hate how my village is treated by HVV (transit from Hamburg) and the bus comes only every hour or less. Stops service except morning and afternoon and is very unreliable and uncomfortable.
Hence I go by car, I would rather take the transit but its so inconvenient that it's unappealing
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I really do think that we need to put more effort into making transit ✨️💗sexy💗✨️
I share your opinion on this topic