A fundamental question to think about when designing either a bus route or a train line is “how far apart should the stops be?” A very useful post on Human Transit explores this matter – and points out an interesting tension between the advantages of closer spacing and wider spacing:
- Wider stops boost speeds and therefore probably boost patronage as catching the bus or train becomes a more attractive option – thereby improving its economic efficiency.
- Closer stops make the system more accessible and therefore may help achieve many of the social goals of public transport provision.
Typically, transport planners work off the assumption that people are willing to walk around 400m to a typical bus service or up to 1000m to get to a fast rapid service, like a train or busway service. Of course as our street networks aren’t perfect grids, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can simply draw a circle around stops or stations – but we can get some idea from more nuanced exercises to understand how close or far apart the stops should be.
As detailed further in the post on Human Transit, if we did have a perfect grid then the “area within a five minute walk” would be a square tilted to 45 degress, and a series of those along a route would look something like this:
Ideally, you want to minimise both the duplicate coverage areas (because they indicate unnecessarily close stop spacing and inefficient use of resources) and the coverage gaps. The close together the stops are, the smaller the coverage gaps will be, but the more duplicate coverage there will be. The reverse is obviously true as well.
Of course the world is not uniformly spread. We have hills and valleys, parks and areas of higher density. If you have a coverage gap over a park then that might not be too much of a problem, and similarly you might want duplicate coverage of a high-patronage generating area such as a university – to make life particularly easy for those using public transport. In short, one would imagine that in the higher density or higher use areas you might be OK with more duplicate areas – because coverage gaps in those areas means you’ll be missing a lot of people; while on the other hand in lower density areas your focus might be on reducing the duplicate areas as you want people to be able to zip through, and the coverage gaps won’t be as damaging to your potential ridership.
One thing that has always puzzled me though is how Auckland seems to be the complete opposite of this. Within the CBD there seems to be a paucity of bus stops, yet along routes in suburban areas it can seem like you’re forever stopping. Firstly, let’s look at inbound Birkenhead Transport buses to the CBD – where there are only three stops in the space of around 1.6 kilometres of bus route within the CBD once the bus leaves the Northern Motorway:
In my opinion this route provides a pretty poor level of accessibility to the majority of the CBD. A lot of people are forced to walk long distances to places like the university, employment areas around Karangahape Road, Britomart railway station and so forth. Because all those areas are high patronage generators, having such widely stopped spacing and having the route effectively skirt the edge of the CBD, means that the “coverage gaps” are significant.
Another example is the outbound route of the 004/005 bus, my regular. It has five stops in the space of around 1.7 km (though the triangular one is so poorly sign-posted nobody ever uses it).
While this isn’t too bad in terms of number of stops per route – the location of the route skirts around the edge of the CBD and where the stops are most regular is on the very edge of where people actually want to go – meaning that most people catching this service need to walk long distances either to the stop near Britomart station at the top of the map or to the stop just after the route turns into Victoria Street (which is up a giant hill from Queen Street).
In contrast, and once again somewhat defying logic, in places outside the CBD we often find bus stops located at very frequent intervals. One example is along New North Road through Kingsland and Morningside where there are 10 bus stops in the space of just under three kilometres:
From my experience the route is so saturated with stops that nobody ever uses the two with yellow circles around them – meaning that they could easily be removed without any fuss whatsoever.
It does seem illogical to me though that we would space our bus stops closer together in suburban areas than in the CBD, where our demand density is that much higher. The only justification behind such illogical thinking seems to be that in the CBD they’ve minimised the bus stops to avoid annoying the car drivers too much – which wouldn’t surprise me as that appears to be the main goal in designing Auckland’s public transport system at times.
We could do well to reverse the situation I think, with closer stop spacing in the CBD and around other activity nodes, but wider spacing in more general suburban areas to allow speeds to be increased.
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With your Birkenhead example there is actually a forth bus stop near Bouzaid Way
Ah that’s right. I can’t remember many people using it though.
The Bouzaid Way stop is NOT matched by any outbound stop. The nearest ones are at Vic Park and Lower Albert St.
No outbound equivalent makes that stop somewhat useless, which is why hardly anyone uses it.
I transfer between the trains and Birkenhead buses twice weekly on average. Heading north in the mornings, I can use any service outbound due to the Lower Albert St stop being handy to Britomart.
Coming back south in the evenings is a little more complex as that Hobson St stop is annoyingly distant from Britomart and the most direct route is downright pedestrian-hostile. I either try for one of their University buses and get off at Customs St, or if it’s too late (last one leavs Highbury at 5:45pm), then I catch one of their normal buses and, while on the Harbour Bridge, check the GPS info for the Vic Park stop and switch to a NEX bus if one is coming less than four minutes behind the bus I’m on. If not, then I get off at Hobson and walk.
That’s way too complicated and relies on intimate knowledge of routes to transfer from/to as well as needing GPS bus data to my phone. Most other people aren’t geeky enough to bother with any of that.
To add slightly to you topic: By accepting that walking distance is mathematically dependant on frequency (as well as other factors) eg. a Busway station catchment is about 1km which is more then double the proposed standard of 400m.
Then consider this example:
3 parallel bus routes (4bus/hr) along 3 parallel roads (600m apart) and say the furtherest person away is 400m. With planned Priority Measures to cover a third of each route.
If you could combine all 3 routes into 1, then straight away you triple the frequency (now 12bus/hr).
So now the same person on the outskirts needs to walk 400m + 600m (= Busway station catchment 10 minute walk)
The same theoretical cost for bus priority can be applied to 1 route and now cover the entire length improving reliability and reduceing operator costs. Bus stops can be three times as nice. And behaviour change initiatives can be focused by catchment. Routes and maps are quickly simlified. Some people have to walk further but all bus patrons are also pedestrians.
I think you’d struggle to find too many situations where you have parallel routes only 200 metres apart. The only example I can think of would be Gillies Ave and Manukau Road – although I think some routes run along Wheturangi Road in Greenlane, which is pretty close to Great South Road.
600m apart
How about the crazy situation on K Road? Bus stops on the overbridge, Pit St crossroad and just before the turnoff into Queen St. But If you wanted to take the first bus to go downtown you have to make some pretty tricky decisions to which bus stop to wait at: ther Queen St buses don’t stop at Pitt St and the Albert St buses don’t use the other two. Why not? Every time Pitt St potential passengers frustratingly waive the bus down only to be disdainly dimissed by the bus drivers roaring past. Not a good advertisement for bus use on one of the busiest streets.
It’s obvious that bus traffic engineers don’t take the bus.
Had that the other day, when a bus stopped and told me, oh this route doesn’t stop here.
Why would a (non-express) bus go past a stop that they don’t stop at, and then still stop to tell you?
On another note, It would be interesting to see what sort of walkup catchment the overbridge bus stop has.
That’d be worse then on the edge of a motorway (concrete river).
I like how when you’re coming down Great North Road most of the buses don’t go all the way through to uni. So all the students get off the bus at Customs Street and then have a lengthy walk through Aotea Square and up the hill. Why couldn’t they go at least a little closer when half the people on the bus seem to study at U of A?
The bus stops seem to be quite a long way apart in suburban Brisbane, so much so that they are shown individually on the downloadable Brisbane bus route maps. This doesn’t seem to discourage patronage, far from it, the buses are packed. This is especially true on the once-every-15-minute BUZ routes which are full off peak. Speed + frequency = success?