Transit on Commercial Drive…or the cost of a bike lane

Some numbers extracted from the Translink GTFS feed [4] (for the day of Sept 5th, 2014), for the 2km segment between Hasting and Broadway. The current average speed is ~11.5km/h, could be increased to ~15km/h with a bus lane…or reduced to ~9km/h according to the tradeoff done to implement bike paths

• number of #20 runs: 304 (but I counted only 276 between Broadway and Hasting) requiring a minimum of 19 vehicles in revenue service [3]
• time and speed between Broadway and Hasting [6]:

Min time	Average time	Max time
10.3mn	5.3mn	12.4mn
Max speed	Average speed	Min speed
22.6km/h	11.65km/h	9.65km/h

• ~15,700 annual operating hours meaning $1.57 millions in annual operating cost (at $100/hr, in line with [5])

bus lane Impact on Commercial Drive
We are considering the previously presented Commercial Drive proposal as illustrated below

4.5meters wide bike+bus lanes, with bus keeping in its lane at bus stop. It features transit signal priority and right turn specific signal to protect both transit and cyclists – Transit average speed is estimated at 15km/h

• This bus lane, featuring clearly marked corridors (protected in one direction) and transit priority signal, suggests that average speed typical of BRT or urban LRT could be achieved: that is ~20km/h.
• That said, noticeabily because the stop are closely spaced, an average speed of 15km/h could be more realisticaly and conservatively achieved:
That is roughly the average speed of the bus 20 outside the Commercial Drive segment.

Annual operating cost

average speed	Average time	Annual operating cost
9km/h	13.3mn	$1.9M
11.5km/h	10.5mn	$1.5M
15km/h	8mn	$1.2M
20km/h	6mn	$0.9M

The potential operating cost saving is in the tune of of $300,000 to $600,000/year.

On the opposite, a configuration of Commercial Drive with a single lane of traffic per direction to preserve parking [2], negatively impacts the speed of the bus, as we have seen before:

Commercial street redesigned as per StreetForeveryone group – Transit average speed is estimated at 9km/h

Similar configurations, be on Davie or Robson, suggest a reduction of the average speed to ~9km/h; That could increase the route 20 operating cost by $400,000/year:

the bus+bike lanes proposal is conductive of $1 Million in operating cost saving versus a proposal favoring street parking over transit.

A bus lane + traffic signal priority, allows an increase in the bus schedule reliability: lay over can be reduced accordingly, increasing the operating saving

Operating cost is only part of the picture:

Capital cost

the slower a bus route is, the more buses are required at same frequency/seat capacity:

The steeper the slope of a line, the faster the travel, and the sooner a vehicle return to its orgin, ready to do another run. the number of starting lines in between represent the required number of vehicle – credit Melbourne on Transit

The bus requirement is compounded by two conflating issues:

Demand is at its greatest at peak hour, but

transit speed is also at its slowest at peak hour

.

On the route 20, afternoon peak hour traffic cost ~4 buses:

number of vehicle in service on route 20 according to the time of the day (graph for friday Sept 5th, 2014)

A bus lane, making transit more immune to traffic congestion, allows to reduce drastically the peak hour buses requirement (in our example, the average speed maintained at ~15km/h, vs 9.5km/h currently in peak hour)

Adding a peak hour bus is a very expensive proposition: it means (to preserve spare ratio, and other contingency)

• the Purchase of an additional bus
• Adding storage capacity for this bus (even if in use 20mn a day)
• Adding maintenance cost
• adding a driver on payroll and all ancilliairy cost (training, administration)

According to a conversation with a former Toronto Transit Commission employee, the TTC is costing an additional peak hour bus at $100,000 a year (that is for a 40footer, typically sold a ~$300,000)

It is worth to note that Translink is in very short supply of articulated trolleybus, estimated each at $1M

Revenue

It is no secret that the faster a transit service is, the more ridership it will attract. That has been again recently verified in Seattle, with a quasi linear relationship:

• an increase of 20% in speed is conductive of a similar increase in the ridership, which de facto increase the bus operator revenue[1]

This coumpounded to lower operating cost makes Transit much more financially sustainable.

Conclusion

When all the effects are combined, it is relatively conservative to estimate that a bike lane, done at the expense of transit on Commerical, could end up to cost more than $1 million/year to Translink, when compared to a solution improving both

…and here we have analyzed only the direct cost for Translink…

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[1] New markings aim to keep drivers out of Battery Street bus lane, Aubrey Cohen, SeattlePi- Tuesday, October 21, 2014.

[2] We refers here to the “Street for Everyone” proposal we have previouslly discussed, which has also been discussed on the pricetag blog.

[3] That makes the route 20 the 4th most frequent bus route of the network, behind route 99,9 and 41.

[4] See our reference spreadsheet (which has been updated with the 2014 data) for further detail.

[5] We use here the hourly operating cost as stated in the 2013 Bus Service Performance Review (see Annex A): it is worth to note that this hourly operating cost doesn’t include neither bus lay over and dead end trips. It doesn’t differentiate artics buses from standard ones too: the $100 mark is a very significant under estimate of the real operating cost of a route. A $180 per customer hour service could be closer to reality as we have seen before.

[6] It seems that the average speed of the route 20 is decreasing year over year, almost 10% reduction in the last 7 years according to our spreadsheet [4] (which also depends of the Translink data quality): A probable consequence of the city council inaction on Transit front