According to the Transportation Research Board’s Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, wait times for transit are around 2 times more onerous to riders than actual in-vehicle time. They see that ratio rise to 2.5 times when wait times are coupled to transfers.
With that in mind, how long is the following journey:
- A 5 minute walk from your front door to your bus stop.
- A 7 minute wait for your bus.
- A 10 minute bus ride to the LRT.
- A 1 minute walk from bus stop to LRT stop.
- A 4 minute wait for the next LRT.
- A 15 minute LRT ride.
- A 3 minute walk from LRT station to your destination.
Standard transit planning practice would say that the total journey time is 45 minutes. But is that accurate? Yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that it’s the actual journey time. No, in the sense that it doesn’t actually reflect the riders’ experience of the journey.
If the TRB is to be believed, the journey feels like it’s 58 minutes long, a 29% premium over actual journey time.
We know time flies when you’re having fun but the exact opposite is true as well.
So when you plan your transit models, shouldn’t you take the experience and subjectivity of your riders into consideration? After all, aren’t those the people you’re serving? Shouldn’t their experience be paramount?
2 Comments
Well experienced user wont walk 5 minutes and then wait another 7 minutes for the bus. They just run 3 Minutes and catch the bus just in time. So its possible to cut 9 Minutes of 45 or 20% of the journey time just by having an exact watch. Of course the bus also must keep its schedule very tight.
But your example is quite realistic and it is a main reason why public transit often loses in terms of speed. And we can see some shift to automated metros to tackle the problems but in your example it will only cut the waiting time for LRT from 4 to 1 minute. Until now there is no CPT system which has the number of station of a usual bus line.
Matthias,
Remember, however, just because one may be an experienced transit user, doesnt mean that the bus service in question is reliable. You may arrive on schedule, but a bus may not.
CPT is not necessarily a solution to this problem and I didnt mean to suggest it was. I simply wanted to point out the problem as one that exists with transit in general.