Recently, it came out that Harris County Metro was promoting a nation wide effort for Americans to use public transportation. I was not aware of this, but I did find out about it via BlogHouston.
Unlike 95-96 percent of Houstonians - and probably nearly all of the loudest promoters of public transportation in this City - the Wizard actually decided to take the bus from home to work this past Friday. In reality, I had been thinking of doing this for about two weeks. I've been doing some research, collecting data on transit speeds on various bus routes, wait times, and so forth. What I have been doing when I go on bus trips is that I write down how long it took for me to access the transit stop, the time I get on the bus, record all stops, the amount of time the bus stops, and time of arrival when I get to where I am going.
Without going into a blow by blow account of my trip on Friday, here is an overview of my trip to work and back home. I live about 9 miles from downtown and happen to have a bus stop at the corner of Westheimer and the street I live at. Of course, when it comes to public transportation, all roads really do lead to downtown, ergo if one does not have a job in downtown like I do, and some 93 percent of people who live in Harris County do not, then the possibilities of transit working for anyone in an urban area diminish substantially.
Here are the general details of what happened.
Going to work
1) I walk out my front door at 7:17:50 am. The bus stop is about 2/10th's of a mile away from where I live. I reach the bus stop at 7:21:12 am, so my walk to the bus stop has taken me 3 minutes and 22 seconds. I see a Metro bus at the next light, but it is not the route I want to take. As it is, that route will also get me to work and might have gotten there as fast as, or faster, than the route I took today. As it is, I let the #53 go by and wait for the #82.
2) The #82 arrives at 7:27:10am. As I get onboard and waive my Metro Q-Card, I keep thinking to myself that I could be nearly half way to work by now if I had taken my car. I also think that I am paying $2 for a round trip today, whereas my cost of gas is about $3. As for the opportunity cost of my time, well gentle readers, that is another story...
3) The #82 is standing room only, so I stand for the first two miles until we get to the Galleria. Most are minorities and working class people. I am the only one dressed in slacks and shirt. There, several people get off and I sit down.
4) At 7:37:05 am, we cross 610 Loop. I would have been reaching my workplace by now in my car.
5) At 7:44:49am, we reach Lamar High School and St. John's private school. There to my surprise, seven students get off the bus and start walking towards Lamar High School. I have seen Lamar students get on the bus in the afternoon, but somehow didn't expect this in the morning.
6) At 7:57:20am, we pass Numbers night club. At 7:59:15am, we reach Louisiana and turn left towards downtown. On the way, I see Houston Police pointing speed guns at drivers along Louisiana. We reach Polk at 8:04:10am. My walk to the office is seven minutes.
Results: My overall trip time door to door was 54 minutes, which is what I was generally expecting. That means my car saves me about 50-60 minutes per day in a round trip.
The actual time in transit was 37 minutes. There were a total of 37 bus stops made, which took a grand total of approximately 602 seconds (ten minutes and two seconds). That works out to an average stop time of 16.27 seconds per stop, but some stops were substantially longer than that. The stop for the light at Kirby and Westheimer, for example took, 62 seconds. If I had taken the #53 instead, I may have gotten to work faster.
The average stop time for the #82 is actually less than for some other bus routes I have taken. For example, for the #15 Fulton bus route, I discovered that the average stop time was about 21 seconds per stop. I did this while doing research in response to the public comment period for the North Corridor rail transit line.
The average speed of my entire trip was 10 miles per hour, if you count walk time and wait times. If you count only time in transit, the speed of the bus was approximately 14 miles per hour. That also happens to be the average speed of travel of the Main Street rail line.
My trip home
1) I left my job Friday evening at 5:55pm. I reached a covered bus stop on Smith at 5:58pm and wait. It rained on Friday. That reminded me that 30 years after being voted into existence, a large percentage of Metro's bus stops still do not have covered shelters at them. The #53 has a bus at the light, but I was on the other side of the street and traffic was steady. Once again, I let the #53 go and decide to take the #82 home.
2) 6:02:10pm, board the next #82 bus. The bus currently has about 15 passengers, including 2-3 professional types. I later discover the professional types all get off at Wesleyan. The bus starts in transit at 6:03:06pm.
3) 6:12:00pm. The bus turns onto Elgin, which of course turns into Westheimer. This time many more people get on and off at random stops and there are several people who request bus stops along the route. I have been finding that Metro buses stop an average of about once every quarter mile. In contrast, the planned light rail lines will have a stop roughly every three fourths of a mile to one mile. I suspect that travel speeds would be faster for a bus than a train if Metro were to run supplemental limited stop buses along the proposed rail lines that were to stop as infrequently as trains do.
While I sit on this trip writing down my times, I found myself occasionally staring out the window and starting to dwell on the thought of public transportation being an amenity of an urban area. Maybe it was the fact of actually being on a bus and taking it to work which concentrated my mind on this matter, rather than writing abstractly from an analytical view. Amenities of all kinds have costs related in producing them. The key is to minimize amenity costs in order to achieve results, especially if you are using public monies for the amenity. Otherwise you wind up with sunk costs and ultimately tax increases in order to pay for the amenity. It should be noted that for the first 22 years of the agency's existence, Metro - incredibly for a government transit agency - never got into financial trouble. Transit agencies that only run buses never do. Once a transit agency crosses that line and starts building big rail networks, the thoughts and worries about where are we going to get more money never quit. Since the rail line was built and talk started of building rail lines in all directions, there has been nothing but talk on how are we going to pay for this. Get used to that.
The increased costs of fuel for Metro from the $1.83 per gallon contract they signed five years ago to updated market prices will cost some $30 million per year, which amounts to increasing the system wide subsidy costs to carry patrons by bus by about 6 cents per passenger mile. In contrast, building the rail line for the North Corridor will result in spending about $3.50 - $4 per passenger mile to attract a new transit rider using light rail as your means of doing so.
And no gentle readers, there is no fuzzy math in that statement. I did not say that the cost would be $4 per gallon of fuel, I said the social costs are about $3.50 - $4 per passenger mile to attract a new rider to transit using light rail as your means of doing it. I arrived at that calculation assuming each and every new rail boarding would result in a five mile trip (which is about the average distance a transit rider travels when taking public transportation), using Metro's own stated forecasts (Metro states that the corridor has 19,000 bus boardings now and will have 29,000 boardings after rail is built), their own cost estimates ($677 million), and the FTA's own mandated cost structures to arrive at that figure. Furthermore, Metro says 55 percent of the riders for the North Corridor alignment will be bus riders arriving at train stop via bus, so instead of getting to take a bus straight into downtown, they will have to probably transfer to the rail line in order to complete their trip.
Imagine having a four seat sedan as your car and that you pick up three of your co-workers to go back and forth to work, driving 10 miles back and forth, or about 5,000 miles per year in the process. Now imagine having to trade up to a five seat Lexus type minivan because another co-worker who happens to live nearby (say a mile away) wants to join your car pool. Then imagine the cost of making that switch would cost you an additional $17,500 - $20,000 per year over and above your current transportation costs. That's what we are getting into when we trade up now from buses to light rail. So would you make that switch and buy that minivan, or would you consider trying to do something cheaper, or do nothing at all? If your answer is yes you would buy that minivan, then that also is what Metro, the Houston Chronicle, and the rail constituency want to do.
Note that none of these figures incorporate losses to patronage from bus routes which have had their routes truncated, rerouted, or eliminated in an effort to accomodate the demands that rail will place on the agency. Metro lost some 23,000 - 25,000 boardings on the 16 main bus routes that intersect the Main Street rail line after the line was built. Expect more of this if the other five rail lines get built. Once again, all we are doing is trading up, and what an expensive trade up that is.
Proper pricing of amenities via using private markets for transportation, which is what actors in the free market and private sector would have to do in order to survive, would cut all of this out. That in turn would allow us to get rid of this notion that everyone should live at the expense of everyone else.
4) The bus reaches 610 Loop at 6:34:40pm and reaches the Galleria 1 minute later. When it does, 14 people get off the bus.
5) I get off the bus at 6:48:40pm. It takes me 90 seconds to cross Westheimer because I don't have the green light when I get off the bus. I get to my front door at 6:54:05pm.
Results: The overall time from door to door is 59 minutes and 5 seconds. The actual time in transit was 45 minutes and 34 seconds, reflecting heavier traffic. There were 38 stops made on the way home. The time spent at stops was 816 seconds, or 13 minutes and 36 seconds. The average time spent at stops was 21.5 seconds.
The average speed of my trip home, door to door, was 9 miles per hour, if you count walk time and wait times. If you count only time in transit, the speed of the bus was approximately 12 miles per hour. I have so far found on traveling four different bus routes that the average travel speed of a Metro bus in transit is some 12-14 miles per hour. If Metro were to introduce a Rapid Bus or Signature bus line down Westheimer, that would eliminate about 75 percent of the bus stops along my bus route and cut the time in transit down by somewhere around 7.5 - 10 minutes in each direction.
One of the things I wrote in my reply to the North Corridor Supplemental Final Environmental Impact Statement was that simply running a bus straight to Northline Mall with the same number of stops as the planned rail line would take approximately 19 minutes. That almost certainly matches the speed of the proposed rail line which would have its own dedicated lane verses a bus which now has to operate in mixed traffic; ergo there would be little or no travel savings to be reaped by spending all that money by building a rail line. What's worse is that Metro plans to cut off road lanes along Fulton (and has floated the idea of doing that to Richmond Avenue), which will cause greater traffic congestion along the route.
One other thought went through my head. The cost of building an at grade light rail line from my home to work would probably cost at least $1,200,000,000, if not far more. It would involve widening and acquiring property along all of Westheimer. Even worse, a rail line traveling 15 miles per hour in transit would have only saved me time on my work trip home. It would have traveled at the same speed on my way in.
Enough for now. I will be going to a visitation this evening for a young colleague who unexpected was taken by a sudden illness. It is a reminder of how cruel life can be. My ADC stories will resume next week.
Wizard.
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at June 22, 2008 02:00 PM