Lies, damn lies, and misleading data: bus service (DC Circulator)

When I went to college there was a book "famous" in economics called Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics, about the manipulation of data.

In reporting on transit ridership, I am bothered when they don't report ridership by bus line or day of the week, but "by the year."  

There was a reddit entry about this on the Alexandria bus system, touting 5 million riders last year, a system high, without discussion of daily data.  It turns out they have about 10,000 riders during a typical weekday, on 12 bus lines. Probably most of the ridership is on the King Street line, which connects the King Street Metrorail station to Old Town.

This comes up with the DC Circulator.  For years they haven't been reporting data by bus line--there are six.  Obviously it's because most of the lines have minimal ridership.   This is from a blog entry, "Semi-reprint: Methodology for determining transit expansion" from 2014:

DC Circulator ridership per day
High and low service months (2013 data)

Route	Ridership Peak	Month	Ridership Low	Month
Georgetown-Union Station	6,600	June	5,500	February
Woodley Park-McPherson	5,060	February	4,000	November
Union Station-Navy Yard	1,700	July	900	November
Rosslyn-Dupont Circle	2,750	July	2,550	October
Potomac Ave.-Skyland	1,650	September	1,150	November

I had no idea that the ridership of these various bus lines was so pathetic. I knew they were bad mostly, but I had no idea how low the ridership is--other than the fact that I look at every Circulator bus that I pass and judge the amount of ridership on that particular bus, and most cases, except Downtown-Georgetown and sometimes on 14th Street, the number of riders appears to be minimal.

2. Circulator expansion is a form of what I call political bus service, provided to assuage business or neighborhood groups, but not really justifiable on a cost basis, because it gets minimal ridership.

Circulator bus at a stop on 14th Street NW.  

The reason this matters is that besides "branding" the most significant element of Circulator service is frequency, ideally every 10 minutes.  

But to justify that level of service cost-wise, you need high ridership, [ideally] 9,000 to 12,000.

DC's highest used buslines provided by Metrobus provide service as frequent as every 6-8 minutes during peak times, and have from 15,000 to 20,000 daily riders.

Even though DDOT makes information about the services available, they are not subject to the same budgetary pressures as the transit services offered by Metro, because the Metro budget process is much more public because their fare and route system is subject to federal regulations about how changes can be implemented, while locally-provided services don't have the same requirements.

So they evade real scrutiny.

3. This is why for many years I have advocated for the creation of an objective set of service metrics and standards for locally-provided transit service, so that decisions about what to offer or to not offer can be made in an objective, non-political, cost effective manner.

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I threw up my hands about the Circulator years ago, calling it "political bus service"--created to assuage particular neighborhood groups, not because it's needed ("Throwing up my hands and the "Anacostia" "Circulator"," 2010).

The fact is that public services ought to be offered where they are used, although breadth--offering services where they wouldn't otherwise be available--is an important criterion too.  The thing is, most Circulator bus lines duplicate in some ways Metrobus service.

Anyway, Greater Greater Washington has an article on the Circulator ("The DC Circulator's electrification dilemma"), saying that the city shouldn't cut back services in order to pay for electric buses, that reducing bus service is a different way of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.  It turns out, introducing electric buses and cutting three lines might actually be the way to get rid of the minimally used services.

The Circulator bus service has six lines.  With 5.7 million riders in a year pre covid, that's an average of 2,735 riders per line per day.  That's pathetic for a city that pre-covid, had multiple Metrobus lines with ridership between 12,000 and 28,000 each day during the week.

But now total ridership is almost 1/3 of that level, so it's fewer than 1,000 daily riders per line.

Note: all transit systems are screwed ridership-wise these days, given the impact of work from home on ridership.  Most systems have less than 50% of pre-covid ridership, although there are a couple of exceptions.

So I understand the dilemmas of transit planning in that environment.  On the other hand, it's all the more reason to discontinue services that are not only minimally used, but duplicated by other services.

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Here in Salt Lake City, a local sustainable mobility group advocated for a dedicated bus lane on a street with only four lanes, for a bus line with fewer than 2,400 riders per day.  That's crazy.

I am reminded about a section in one of the books I read about the Vietnam War, that the US kept reporting battle victories duly written about in the New York Times, but a journalist mapped each battle, and noticed that each one was that much closer to Saigon, indicating that actually the US/ARVN were losing territory.  

New Jersey still has private transit carriers providing "public transit"

In "Revisiting the need for comprehensive transportation planning at the metropolitan and regional scales | For profit services, and White's Ferry, Montgomery and Loudoun Counties" I discussed how the private ferry between Montgomery County Maryland and Loudoun County Virginia hadn't been acknowledged as a "transit service" in those counties respective master transportation plans, and when conditions changed, leading to closure, they had no quick way of responding.  

It's a demonstration of a quirk in planning generally and transportation planning specifically. Mostly, a master plan only covers what the government controls or operates, and usually ignores for profit services, and often, franchised services.

Passengers board an A&C Bus Corp No. 32 bus at Hudson Mall on Route 440 in Jersey City, Tuesday, July 25, 2023. (Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey Journal)

It turns out that in New Jersey, a number of "public transit" routes are actually operated by private carriers, not necessarily with public subsidy.  In Jersey City, A&C Transit, which operates 4 heavily used lines, announced it is shutting down.

You'd think that because there is a statewide transit agency in New Jersey, NJ Transit, that they would have a way of responding to this--not unlike how in the 1960s and 1970s privately owned transit companies ended up being acquired by local governments, because they wanted to maintain the services even as the companies shut down.

But apparently that isn't the case (" NJ Transit can’t let A&C bus routes die," Jersey Journal).  From the article:

Everyone seemed to be taken by surprise last week when it was learned that the nearly century-old A&C Bus Corp. would be shutting down the Nos. 30, 31, 32 and 33 lines at the end of October. 

Local officials immediately started banging at NJ Transit’s door, but the response was less than enthusiastic. That may be attributable to a sort of shellshock at NJT as multiple privately operated bus routes have had a hard time recovering from the pandemic, leaving the state’s public transportation system scurrying to find answers. 

Now that the reality has had a chance to set in, the people who depend on the A&C bus lines and the greater community should expect and receive the full support of NJT.

It's the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (commuter railroads) all over again.

You'd think that local, regional and state transit agencies would be monitoring these services, and preparing to step in if there are problems.

Great quote that gets at the heart of perceptions of commercial districts

'Time for a refresh': Even Nashville tourists think downtown's vibe is off. 

Photo: Andrew Nelles, Nashville Tennessean.

The Nashville Tennessean has an article, "'Time for a refresh': Even Nashville tourists think downtown's vibe is off," on its premier entertainment district, Lower Broadway, which is a mix of retail, restaurant, and music establishments ("'A money making machine': Is Nashville's iconic Lower Broadway losing its music soul?," NT), and cultural facilities centered around country music.  From the article:

"We visited a couple years ago, and I wasn’t 21, so we just walked up and down. Now that I’m 21, it’s going to be different for sure," Galicki said. "But it does seem a little bit more run-down, and there are more homeless people." 

The post-COVID tourism boom in Nashville has led to congested streets, incessant noise and unruly party-bus crowds, issues that city leaders are striving to manage. Cell phone thefts, assaults, and pickpocketing were common last year. 

Progress is being made, but not before some major downtown businesses are relocating to calmer areas like the Gulch and Midtown. Music City Center CEO Charles Starks told board members recently that convention attendees are hesitant to venture downtown between meetings. "It used to be that the first questions we got were about sustainability, food service and tech," Starks said. "Now, the focus has shifted to public safety."

There have been issues of various types for awhile, see:

-- "Another example of why local culture plans need to include an element on retail/dealing with for profit elements of the cultural ecosystem: Nashville's Tubb Record Shop," 2022
-- "Leveraging music as cultural heritage for economic development: part two, popular music," 2017

But like with downtowns and entertainment districts and destinations across the country, e.g., the Philadelphia Inquirer reports ("Philly arts groups struggle to bring back audiences after COVID") that many of the theaters and museums and other cultural establishments there have lost at least 30% of their audience compared to pre-covid times, Nashville's Lower Broadway district is going through some hard times as audiences have shrunken.  

To me, it's an illustration that you always have to actively manage such districts, especially because of the possibility of slowdown.  

E.g., in my old haunt of H Street NE in Washington, DC, a number of places are closing according to reports on local social media, and it's likely due to always increasing competition (the Wharf has expanded, there is more going on at Navy Yard and near by, the Union Market district continues to intensify), plus DC's crime issues, and the post-covid drop off in business.  

I also wonder if having lost one of its champions ("Joe Englert, DC nightlife impresario, dies | Lessons about nightlife-based revitalization," 2020) makes a difference too.  He was more than a planner, as he brought money, buildings, concepts, talent, vendor relationships, and the ability to deal with government agencies to the fore, and facilitated the opening of many taverns and nightlife destinations there.

The quote, emphasis added:

David Corman, director of safety services at Nashville Downtown Partnership, suggests that the heightened fear among the public is more about perception than reality, as crime rates have decreased. In the first six months of this year, 64 major, Part 1 offenses downtown were reported to police compared to 70 crimes during the same period last year. 

“We have a saying here that if it doesn’t look clean, then it doesn’t feel clean and, subsequently, safe and that can impact an individual’s perception of crime," Corman said. "When someone is solicited for money or experiencing an unhoused person’s living situation downtown, all of this interacts with an individual’s internal biases and plays into how we experience our own feeling of safety."

Perceptions matter.  And what influences them needs to be managed and addressed.

Years ago, I wrote a piece that I called "The Soft Side of Commercial District Revitalization," which included clean and safe issues.

But it's also about disorder and a more cavalier attitude about it.  Pre-covid there was a lot of willingness to futher "define deviance down" in terms of "petty crimes" like fare evasion and shoplifting, because of the idea that people committed these crimes because they were poor, not because they were inherently criminals.  

But I think it backfired, as did other measures (like letting more alleged criminals out before trial), in that it led to an increase in crime in many ways, making things worse overall.

This has been abetted by the public camping element of homelessness, which diminishes the quality of many public spaces.

Nashville.  The article discusses the area's transformation over the past 20 years, which has been remarkable.  But the impact too from touristification, the challenge of putting resources in other parts of the city and county (which have a merged government), and political interference from the State Legislature, which is Republican while the city is more Democrat.

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Cf.  There is a Business Insider article, "Every American city wanted to be cool. Now they're all just boring copies of each other."  While my line is that all places are unique, but few are exceptional, in that they can't be compared, which many people argue, Nashville is a unique place.  

But there is no question that as places are touristified, they can be homogenized.  Definitely this is the case as places become what we might call night life bar districts.

Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking

1.  Boston is promoting digital library access at 20 bus stops ("Borrowing books on the bus? It’s happening in Boston," Boston Globe).

It's not particularly pathbreaking.  Libraries in places like Orange County, California and Calgary have put in book lending stations at transit stations in their communities for more than a decade.

2.  But once again, it raises the issue of how to make bus stops more than perfunctory places within a neighborhood and community.  See past blog entries:

-- "Pathetic not revelatory: Quality of bus stop study in San Francisco," 2021
-- "Bus shelters as social spaces, as potential vectors for virus: Seoul's new anti-covid bus shelter," 2020

Project for Public Spaces has a report on the topic, Destination Station: Transforming Bus Stops through Community Outreach.

3.  Utah has invested in bus stops, but given the heat and sun in the summer months, the fact that a majority of stops have zero provision for shade is a problem.  And not providing a shelter doesn't work out so great in the winter either.

There are three bus stops--no shelters--alongside Sugar House Park for which I am on the board, and I hope that we can work with the Utah Transit Authority to put shelters in, and at at least two of the locations, to incorporate greenery.

Transit shelter next to a fence/golf course, E. Spring Street, Long Beach, California, 

with bougainvillea growing on top of the shelter

A few years ago, there was a public art project with one bus shelter in Everett, Massachusetts that did something similar ("Everett tried to make a bus stop pretty," Boston Globe).  But only for three days.

Rendering of “Felipe Baeza: Unruly Forms,” which will be presented by Public Art Fund next month on more than 400 JCDecaux bus shelters and street furniture throughout New York, Chicago, Boston in the United States, and Mexico City, León, Querétaro in Mexico.  Image: Public Art Fund, NY

4.  The New York Times has an article on a bus shelter public art project, "Watching for the Bus Stop Gallery."  From the article:

Starting Aug. 9, the artist, whose home base is Brooklyn, will be giving people something to think about during their own public transportation journey, or purgatory as the case may be. As part of a Public Art Fund program designed to reach people where they live or commute, Baeza will have eight of his mixed-media, collagelike paintings reproduced on some 400 JCDecaux bus shelters in New York, Boston and Chicago as well as Querétaro and Léon in Mexico. They will also appear on digital kiosks and newsstands in Mexico City.... 

And his paintings for the project — fantastic, ritualistic images of human bodies in different stages of transformation or regeneration — touch on the power of mobility. Speaking from a small office-like studio at the Getty, where he had a nine-month residency ending in June, Baeza called his subjects “unruly forms” or “fugitive bodies” who don’t conform to norms or abide by laws. Some seem to be morphing into sea creatures or mythic birds; others are on the cusp of flight.

I especially like the leveraging of digital ad networks across cities.  

I proposed something like that, although within communities, as point #10, "Create a digital community and transit information network for Silver Spring, employing kiosks and mobile applications" in "PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District" | Part 3: Program items 10-18" (2018).

An illustration of Jane Jacobs' point about the value of "a large stock of old buildings" to center city health

In Death and Life of Great Cities, the author lists four factors that undergird healthy cities.  One is "a large stock of old buildings."

The interior of a second-floor office space in 123 S. Broad St, occupied by the architecture firm Coscia Moos.

The point wasn't that these buildings are attractive (hopefully) and support historic preservation, it's that "old buildings" are paid off and offer lower rents, and therefore support innovative uses like business startups that need low costs in order to develop ("Jane Jacobs and the value of older, smaller buildings," Journal of the American Planning Association, 2016, "Big Data Backs Jane Jacobs: Cities Need Old Buildings," Smart Cities Dive).

Of course, she wrote that 60+ years ago.  

In a city like Washington, where the height limit constrains development, old buildings tend to get torn down and rebuilt or renovated so that they can continue to command higher rents.  

That's why I argue DC should allow higher heights, because small organizations are displaced to the suburbs, reducing the economic vitality at the core (although this is mostly a theoretical argument).

-- "Another attempt to raise discussion about the DC Height Limit"

In Philadelphia, 123 S. Broad Street, an old building not paid off, but with lower financing and running costs, is able to thrive by renting to organizations attracted to historic architecture, the ability to lease smaller spaces than typically available in newer buildings, and lower rents ("123 S. Broad is finding a niche in Philadelphia’s uncertain office market," Philadelphia Inquirer).

Seattle, All Star Baseball Game, free transit throughout the city and metropolitan area

 Just the other day, "Desperate times sometimes lead to a more marketing-oriented guise: WMATA/Metrorail | Bonus: WMATA's financial crisis," discussed special event transportation, and how WMATA in DC provided free transit starting the evening of July 4th, to facilitate movement to and from fireworks displays.

Yesterday and today are the primary days of activities around the Baseball All Star Game, which this year is in Seattle.  According to The Center Square ("Seattle public transit free Monday and Tuesday for MLB All Star game"):

This fare-free period applies to the following services in the region; 

• Access Paratransit 
• King County Water Taxi, Metro and RapidRide Buses
• Metro Flex on-demand Services 
• Sound Transit Link light rail 
• Seattle Streetcars 
• Kitsap Transit Buses 
• Kitsap Fast Ferry

Notably excluded from the free fare period for the region are Pierce Transit, Community Transit, and the Seattle Center Monorail, which will continue to charge riders on July 10 and 11.

In February, Utah Transit Authority provided free transit days around the NBA All Star Game, and for an outdoor music festival in May. 

 

Opposition to affordable housing in Chevy Chase, DC

Chevy Chase Community Center, Washington, DC.

The Washington Post has an article, "D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood in uproar over affordable housing," about how proposals for a new Chevy Chase Community Center, incorporating a variety of improvements as well as housing above, which could be either 100% affordable housing or partial, are being met by opposition.

What bugs the s* out of me about this, is how DC goes in circles perpetually.  

A fine looking mixed use building with a library on the ground floor and affordable housing above, in Portland, Oregon.

For example, I remember in a DC planning meeting in the very early 2000s, learning about how the Hollywood branch of the Portland library system had a library and cafe on the ground floor, and 47 units of affordable housing above (" Putting housing above a public library, Portland takes another pioneering step toward urban density," Metropolis Magazine, 2002).  That's 20! years ago.

Baldwin Apartments on H Street NE; 37 apartments, 100% affordable, over ground floor retail and building amenities.

Similar proposals were made for some libraries in DC--the West End Library site was redeveloped as high income housing, and high quality affordable housing was built on H Street NE on the site of a modular, dinky library ("All-Affordable Apartment Building Headed to H Street NE," NBCWashington).

A proposal in Tenleytown ("Fenty Announces Development Partner for Tenley-Janney Site," DC press release, 2008) was successfully fought off, and in Southeast DC, in the Benning Road neighborhood, residents fought the idea fearing that pedophiles would live in the housing, and prey on children using the ground floor library ("Mixed-Use Messages," Washington City Paper, 2006).   

Obviously, DC itself has successful examples of doing this, although more with replacing the civic asset rather than including it going forward.  Still you can take the civic asset example from Portland, and the successful housing examples from DC and Portland, and apply it to Chevy Chase.

Although Chevy Chase is also right to be worried.  DC has actively placed Section 8 tenants in apartment buildings up and down Connecticut Avenue, and many of the households have been a scourge, bringing the 'hood to Ward 3 ("D.C. housed the homeless in upscale apartments. It hasn’t gone as planned," Washington Post, "Mayor Bowser meets with Connecticut Ave. tenant leaders," Forest Hills Connection).

But buildings like The Baldwin Apartments show it can be done successfully, in a manner that improves the range of what's available in a neighborhood.  But DC Government shows a lot that it's management capacity is weak.

Normally, I'd not recommend such a location because it's practically in Maryland, and low income residents need good transit access.  OTOH, it would provide options for DC residents who might work in Montgomery County, and there is decent bus service on Connecticut Avenue, and the Friendship Heights Metrorail Station is a 15 minute walk to Wisconsin Avenue (and even faster by bike).

Upholstered cushions affixed to a wall bench by a bus stop on wall by a bus stop on Hackney Road (Bethnal Green/Shoreditch, London) upholstered by the trainees in the Shoreditch Design Rooms upholstery program

Reddit photo. 

-- Shoreditch Design Rooms

Also see: 

-- "Bus shelters as social spaces," 2020

-- "Pathetic not revelatory: Quality of bus stop study in San Francisco," 2021

-- "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," 2013

Digital ad screens in NYC Subway stations display weekend service closure maps

Reddit photo from r/nycrail.

In 2018, I had a meeting and walking tour of part of London with Ivan Bennett, who had been product design manager for the London bus system--it was a fabulous experience, about 6 hours.  

-- "Thinking systematically about bus transit service improvements: spurred by Columbia SC, Edmonton AB, and Baltimore," 2017
-- "Branding's (NOT) All You Need for Transit," 2018

One of the points he made along the way was about digital screens being able to display different kinds of maps much more easily.  

For example, at night, the display of a digital bus system map could be limited to the night time bus route network.  

This is another example of the positive opportunities offered by digital display screens for transit system maps.  

Previously, NYC Subway used posters to present this information, which had to be printed and put up.