Don’t know if he wants the job(s), but if they know what’s good for them, CTA, RTA, the Metropolitan Planning Council, and the Active Transportation Alliance should all be trying to hire Nick. Yesterday.
This is a great proposal. i regularly ride the 22 Clark and there are way too many stops too close together. If this could help with the horrible bus bunching problem on this route, this is an even better idea. If only the CTA would be willing to make changes and implement best practices from other cities.
This article has been lingering in my inbox, but I'm glad I finally got to it. I am regularly frustrated by how close together bus stops are, so I support consolidation. I think there are some very real challenges, mainly around community outreach and people advocating to keep their personal bus stop, but hopefully NITA will make it possible to remove at least some stops on some key routes. Thank you for doing this analysis!
Jerusalem needs to take this lesson. Jerusalem is an awesome case study in family -friendly urbanism, but this is definitely one thing they get wrong. One circular road has something like 5 bus stops in 1 km.
It's gonna be a no from me, dawg. Frequent, close stops are what make our buses great. Folks shouldn't have to walk too far to be able to get on CTA, especially if they have mobility issues and/or are carrying heavy stuff. And I appreciate being dropped off as close as possible to home when I'm taking the bus alone at night; spreading out stops would mean I'm more vulnerable and walking further alone.
This was excellent. One reason I’m really supportive of bus stop consolidation in NYC is that we have an enormous density of individual lines. Even when you balance stops, you still have people living a quarter mile or 5 minute walk from a stop. What could be challenging for Chicago is that bus stop balancing may create a scenario where many people live a 10 minute walk from a local line. That can be a hard sell for street level service like that, but then again it’s an easier sell if that bus is indeed faster and more reliable. :)
Your graphs at the beginning of the article really paint a picture though. I’m convinced.
Chicago has bus lines spaced between arterials (1/2mi) that are a 10m walk apart at most. Currently, a rider is only a 1/4mi away (5min) at most and the ask is that it increases to 3/8mi (7.5min). This is not directly related, but you can see how various radi capture how far someone is from a stop in this policy visualization (https://misterclean.github.io/illinois-people-over-parking-act/).
In downtown Houston, the stop spacing is every-other block. The standard downtown block is 250 feet, plus 60-80 feet for street width, or 310-330 feet. That's at or about 1/16 mile, implying stop spacing in downtown of about 620-660 feet, or close to 1/8 mile.
You don't want to map it like that. I did that originally and there's so much data (10,000+ points and 200+ shapefiles) in there that it takes at least a minute to do an initial load.
I think it should be much much faster than that. Can I take a stab? If you just pass the list of everything except the first two layers like this should be the same as the current load time
I didn't write extensively about my method (boring to some), but I'm happy to answer questions about contributing resources and decision tree design.
I'm a huge fan of bus stop consolidation! It's such a low hanging fruit. Thanks for sharing!
I found a job opening for Nik at CTA: “Director, Policy”
https://chicagotransit.taleo.net/careersection/exm/jobdetail.ftl?job=2500008Y
Don’t know if he wants the job(s), but if they know what’s good for them, CTA, RTA, the Metropolitan Planning Council, and the Active Transportation Alliance should all be trying to hire Nick. Yesterday.
(Someone who is not me should tell them this)
This is a great proposal. i regularly ride the 22 Clark and there are way too many stops too close together. If this could help with the horrible bus bunching problem on this route, this is an even better idea. If only the CTA would be willing to make changes and implement best practices from other cities.
Great analysis, well done!
Out of curiosity, where did those catchment area diagrams come from?
Those are from an APTA white paper https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Standards_Documents/APTA-SUDS-UD-RP-001-09.pdf
This article has been lingering in my inbox, but I'm glad I finally got to it. I am regularly frustrated by how close together bus stops are, so I support consolidation. I think there are some very real challenges, mainly around community outreach and people advocating to keep their personal bus stop, but hopefully NITA will make it possible to remove at least some stops on some key routes. Thank you for doing this analysis!
Jerusalem needs to take this lesson. Jerusalem is an awesome case study in family -friendly urbanism, but this is definitely one thing they get wrong. One circular road has something like 5 bus stops in 1 km.
It's gonna be a no from me, dawg. Frequent, close stops are what make our buses great. Folks shouldn't have to walk too far to be able to get on CTA, especially if they have mobility issues and/or are carrying heavy stuff. And I appreciate being dropped off as close as possible to home when I'm taking the bus alone at night; spreading out stops would mean I'm more vulnerable and walking further alone.
I agree with the goal and need for this. But I think you dismiss the disability argument too easily. Disability advocates would oppose this, I bet.
This was excellent. One reason I’m really supportive of bus stop consolidation in NYC is that we have an enormous density of individual lines. Even when you balance stops, you still have people living a quarter mile or 5 minute walk from a stop. What could be challenging for Chicago is that bus stop balancing may create a scenario where many people live a 10 minute walk from a local line. That can be a hard sell for street level service like that, but then again it’s an easier sell if that bus is indeed faster and more reliable. :)
Your graphs at the beginning of the article really paint a picture though. I’m convinced.
Chicago has bus lines spaced between arterials (1/2mi) that are a 10m walk apart at most. Currently, a rider is only a 1/4mi away (5min) at most and the ask is that it increases to 3/8mi (7.5min). This is not directly related, but you can see how various radi capture how far someone is from a stop in this policy visualization (https://misterclean.github.io/illinois-people-over-parking-act/).
I hope NYC can keep up what they did with Queens: https://www.mta.info/project/queens-bus-network-redesign/service-changes
Not being rhetorical: what’s the plan for convincing little old ladies to walk through the snow for an extra 2.5 minutes during community outreach?
We have the same problem in Miami even after our Better Bus Network redesign last year.
Do you know if they did it in-house or contracted it out (if so, do you know who to)?
I think they contracted the design out. I'm not sure of the consultant.
In downtown Houston, the stop spacing is every-other block. The standard downtown block is 250 feet, plus 60-80 feet for street width, or 310-330 feet. That's at or about 1/16 mile, implying stop spacing in downtown of about 620-660 feet, or close to 1/8 mile.
@nik can you post the R script you used for the mapping to https://github.com/nikhunder/CTA-Bus-Stop-Reduction ?
I was going to open a pull request to make the map default to showing the stops. Right now it defaults to nothing
You don't want to map it like that. I did that originally and there's so much data (10,000+ points and 200+ shapefiles) in there that it takes at least a minute to do an initial load.
I think it should be much much faster than that. Can I take a stab? If you just pass the list of everything except the first two layers like this should be the same as the current load time
hideGroup(c(
"foo",
"bar"
))
I'll email you the .R.Data, dependencies, and mapping code.