Exactly right. Fred Jarrett has an excellent article on bus service allocation over at Crosscut. He’s writing about service in King County, but the principles he lays out could be applied pretty much anywhere:
Metro’s strategic policy should be to put buses where they work, and where we want them to work. Putting buses where they work (drawing good ridership) will maximize the performance of the system in those markets where transit can dominate: Downtown Seattle, the University District, Bellevue, and SeaTac. These are job centers already dense enough to make transit successful, and they are designated as growth centers for regional employment. They are the “cash cows” of the system.
More interesting, though, is putting buses where we want them to work. For 20 years, we’ve had a regional strategy of growing “centers” with density sufficient to be successful transit markets. Current plans identify 27 such centers in 18 cities in the county, and propose “prioritizing transit funding” to encourage investment in those centers… Thus far, despite our “multi-modal” goals, our growth management policies have focused on vehicle mobility.
And:
Meanwhile, standards for those markets where we want transit to work in should be tied to specific commitments by cities and other public agencies to measurable concurrency decisions.
All service cuts should be based on these standards: Service should not be taken from markets where transit has a competitive advantage or from urban centers where committed development plans give transit a competitive advantage.
It all seems so glaringly obvious, right? And yet in the Seattle area, as in some other cities, transit service is often allocated by arcane, political, and counterproductive means. (Seattleites are cursed with what’s known as the 40-40-20 rule, which basically ensures that the most transit-friendly neighborhoods get trumped by the suburbs.) Jarrett’s point is that in an era of serious budget cutting by transit agencies, we have a rare window of opportunity to rethink our systems and design them for efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Hear, hear.
Bus photo courtesy of Flickr user Oran Viriyincy under a Creative Commons license.
Bill LaBorde
I agree. More smart thinking on transportation and land use from one of our best thinkers on this issue, Fred Jarrett. As mentioned on my comments posted to the Crosscut article, I do want to offer a few caveats:First, we have to keep in mind that Metro and other transit systems not only exist to get people back and forth to work but also to provide transportation for people who can’t get around any other way – people who can’t afford the costs of driving, people with disabilities and people too young or old to drive. Dial-a-ride service is a sometimes cheaper alternative but in many areas fixed route service makes more sense, even if ridership is not particularly high.There are also still very healthy transit markets in areas that fall outside the growth centers – South Seattle, West Seattle, Des Moines and Woodinville and parts of Federal Way all fall outside PSRC designated growth centers but are still good transit markets with expectations of frequent and reliable service. These non-center areas and others like them deserve to retain frequent and reliable service at least during commute hours.Finally, moving more service away from underperforming and expensive routes to better serve growth centers, along with several of the mentioned recommendations from the audit, will certainly increase efficiencies at Metro. However, the reality is that revenue is falling off so dramatically over the next few years that these efficiencies alone are simply not enough, especially when demand for transit service continues to grow. The legislature needs to step up to the plate and provide Metro and other systems more local revenue tools (what about that 1% MVET authority promised as part of the Alaska Way tunnel agreement?), and more funding for the paltry state grant programs like the Regional Mobility Grants. Since the legislature repealed the statewide MVET, the state has treated transit like an afterthought in our transportation system. But the reality for urban and suburban residents around our state is that transit is central to our transportation system and our economy.
joshuadf
Other than the 20/40/40, I can’t figure out what he’s talking about. Isn’t the KC Metro system already centered on Downtown Seattle, the University District, Bellevue, and other growth centers like Northgate and Redmond? How would these “strategic routes” be different?