The seamless (no transfer) journey – Transit’s Holy Grail!
A repost from 2009 – updated.
Route 5 (tramtrain) travels from Worth t0 Bietigheim-Bissingen, through downtown Karlsruhe.
It has been long known that the seamless or no transfer journey is the ‘ticket’ to attract customers to public transit as it is well understood that one could lose upwards of 70% of ridership per transfer, even intermodal. On older tramways and streetcar systems, many lines offered more than one service, providing the all important seamless journey to many destinations. Cities that abandoned their streetcar and tramways in favour of subways, forced many customers to first take a bus to the metro and then for many, transfer back to bus again. Many transit customers found that the car provided the seamless journey and with the added advantage being easier and less time consuming to use.
Though transit officials were aware of the problem of loss of ridership due to transfer, little was done to improve the situation until a very dramatic event happened in 1993, in Karlsruhe Germany. When Karlsruhe’s first two-system (Zweisystem) or tram train line opened, replacing one major transfer point (commuter train to tram) at the main train station, ridership surged way beyond expectations! Weekday ridership on the tram train increased 423% in just a few weeks.
Before LRTAi??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? Commuter trainAi??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? After LRT Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai??Ai?? % increase
Weekdays – Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? 488,400 Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? 2,064,370 Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai??Ai??Ai?? 423%
SaturdayAi?? -Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? 39,000Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? 263,120Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? 675%
Sunday Ai?? – Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? 6,200Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? 227,478Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai??Ai?? 3,669%
Total – Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? 533,600 Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai??Ai?? 2,554,976 Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai?? Ai??Ai?? 479%
(Albtal-Verkengesllschaft Karlsruhe & ABB Henchel)
Since Karlsruhe’s dramatic increase in patronage on their tram train system, European planners have put great emphases on the all important seamless (no-transfer) journey and designed new transit lines, not as feeders to subways or regional railways but as stand alone transit lines servicing major destinations, even in competition with other transit modes.
The lesson of Karlsruhe should not be lost on the advocates for the return of the Valley interurban service, who want the new service to terminate at Scott Road SkyTrain Station and compel those who want to go to Vancouver to transfer to SkyTrain. The all important seamless journey from Vancouver to Langley, Abbotsford and Chilliwack may just provide the ridership to make the new service successful!
Super article. Transfers to ST lines and Bee lines are a complete failure. Trams if we can rid Metro Vancouver of the corruption are path forward for transit here, as in most other cities in the world.
If TransLink spends billions of dollars on the subway to UBC, there is going to be plenty of money to go around to wet all the beaks of certain mayors, journalists… engineers. Yup, party! Shysters at TransLink have no interest in improved transit for transit users, just subway and ST lines to wet their beaks.
Here is TransLink’s latest purported solution for the pending 99 B-Line route chaos: queue lines at Commercial Drive and Broadway. TransLink wasted the entire summer and ran mostly empty 99 B-Lines to UBC while UBC was closed. Then one week before UBC starts, TransLink paints a few lines on the sidewalk at Commercial Drive and Broadway to ease the wait for the 99 B-Line. What was the reason for this? To emphasize the overcrowding on the 99 B-Line and to not do anything to solve it?
http://www.theprovince.com/news/TransLink+hoping+avoid+commuter+chaos+painting+lineup+queues+Line+stop+Commercial+Broadway/10148628/story.html
In another riveting article on transit by “Kelly Sinoski” of the Vancouver Sun, the most pressing issue for TransLink on the new Evergreen Line is what colour to pick for the cars. Is this what the morons spend their time worrying about at TransLink?
http://www.vancouversun.com/TransLink+will+keep+Evergreen+name+SkyTrain+line/10147777/story.html
Honestly, you could put monkeys in the chairs behind the desks at TransLink and we’d be no worse off for transit. Let’s go back to the overcrowding problem on the 99 B-Line route and look at it in more detail to see whether anything else might be done in case the painted lines by TransLink flop.
Broadway transit
TransLink has two reasons for doing things: the one that sounds good (reported in the newspapers, Vancouver Sun, usually) and the real one which isn’t reported. TransLink contends that the express service on the 99 B-Line route saves time and attracts riders. From Commercial Drive to UBC over 13 kilometres, mostly along Broadway, there are 50 traffic lights and any time saved by express transit service over regular transit service is minor, a few seconds or minutes at most depending upon the time of day. If you were going to select a road for express transit service in Vancouver, logically, Broadway has to be one of the last ones. There is no cure for stupidity and no cure for the idiots who run transit at TransLink.
Express service on Broadway is a red herring and does not save the time suggested by TransLink. On Broadway along the 99 B-Line route, diesel buses run every two minutes at peak times; whereas, trolleybuses on Broadway only operate about every 10 minutes at peak times. Frequency of service (rather than express service) on the 99 B-Line route attracts riders to the 99 B-Line route. TransLink could replace the express service with regular service and not only improve the transit service on Broadway but also reduce overcrowding.
Presently, the 99 B-Line blows by transit users waiting for the trolleybuses on Broadway and these blow-bys far exceed the pass-ups (infrequent delays during peak hours, occasionally) for transit users waiting for the 99 B-Line which arrives either full or empty during the morning rush hours “due to TransLink dumping too many passengers off at Commercial Drive and not offering alternate routes off Broadway”. At the same time, most transit routes in parallel to the 99 B-Line route are starved for passengers all day. If the express service is eliminated on the 99 B-Line route, the travel time to UBC is about the same but there is no incentive for transit users to use the 99 B-Line route and avoid all other parallel routes. Hence, all the bus routes to UBC are more evenly used, alleviating the crowding on the 99 B-Line route and improving ridership on the No. 9 and No. 14 trolleybus routes lacking riders on Broadway, in particular.
So, you see, the overcrowding on the 99 B-Line route is a hoax. TransLink can eliminate it and has created it as an excuse for the subway to UBC. This is the unreported and real reason for the “express” 99 B-Line service: create the overcrowding and solve it by taxing us to award billions of dollars in contracts to the friends of TransLink – but that’s not the story that the Vancouver Sun will ever print – and if TransLink spends billions of dollars on the subway to UBC, there is going to be plenty of money to go around to wet all the beaks of certain mayors, journalists… engineers. Yup, party!
Eventually, beak wetters like the ones at TransLink take it too far… and the party ends…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT5bPEc7KEI
Might it surprise you to know that the Expo line ‘lost money’ for amolst 20 years? And that 99 per cent of bus routes in the region also ‘lose money?’ Overall, our transit system recovers 55 per cent of its operating costs at the farebox…and that’s one of the best recovery ratios in North America.Ken Hardie, TransLink