Bus Route Ineffeciencies

By Fester:

Mass transit for it to be truly cross-class mass transit instead of the option that is only taken when there are no other affordable options needs to be clean, reliable, predictable and not onerously slow.  The Port Authority, Pittsburgh's local transit authority, does a good job on the clean, reliable and not onerously slow part for most of the city and inner ring suburb routes, but the predictable portion needs to be worked upon. 

As I was waiting for a bus to take me home last night on Forbes Avenue, I saw a steady stream of buses go by.  However the stream had a few inefficiencies in it.  I saw a full 71-A go by with people stacked on top of each other at 6:12.  At 6:14 I saw another 71-A with three passengers go by.  The same applies for the 71-C as one went by standing room only and another passed me four minutes later with 90% spare capacity.  Finally the convoy of 61's came through, the C, D, A, C, and finally my B to take me home.  The lead few buses were packed as the most heavily used stretch is from Downtown to Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill, but the trail buses in this four or five minute span were at a third capacity at most. 

This bunching of bus capacity makes the system far less reliable if a rider is either not intimately familiar with their needed route or if their destination is past a major trunk line where some buses are randomly packed to the gills and will go by certain stops.  I would have had to wait another half an hour if the 61-B was the lead bus instead of the trail bus in this pelaton.  That is not predictable.

One of the potential and low cost solutions is to reschedule the complementary and duplicated routes so instead of having five buses make the Downtown to Squirrel Hill run go by a time point within a span of three minutes and then not see another bus on that run for another twenty minutes, spreading those five buses across time so that a bus passes that same time point every three to five minutes.  That should reduce unpredictability as well as increase passenger comfort. 

Delivering convenient, efficient and predictable services should be the epitome of effective and responsive government and governmental authorities.  Getting these basics right should be a small-brainer.