A bus network is a compromise between ridership and coverage. Trunk routes provide the bulk ridership, while feeder lines fill in the geographic gaps. Geographic coverage is pretty important for low-income riders without cars, seniors, persons with disabilities. And in a place like Silicon Valley, geographic coverage is also needed for reaching the remote office parks.
However, feeder routes do not generate much farebox revenue. And with VTA struggling to pay for a ludicrously expensive BART subway, it is looking to cut bus service:
Despite a Santa Clara Valley population and jobs boom, ridership on buses and light-rail trains has dropped a staggering 23 percent since 2001, forcing the Valley Transportation Authority to consider its biggest shake-up ever in transit service.
Tough, unpopular decisions loom if the VTA hopes to attract those new passengers, get them to their destinations and improve its dismal 10 percent fare box return, which is the worst in the nation among similar agencies.
At the crux: Is the board willing to cut sparsely used, unprofitable routes that carry a handful of passengers — many of whom have no other means of transportation?
“This is going to take quite a bit of courage,” VTA General Manager Nuria Fernandez said following the release of a 68-page report on bus operations. “Ridership continues to decrease. Our fare box is not getting any better. Clearly we are going to have to make a choice to take a chance or nothing will ever change.”
Currently, about 30 percent of VTA bus service is geared to covering areas where bus rides are vital to the very few riders those lines carry. The two-year, $50,000 report by consultant Jarrett Walker + Associates said if that was lowered to 20 percent or 10 percent and money was redirected to the most heavily used routes, ridership and fare revenues would likely increase.
VTA riders are being given a hobson’s choice. They can choose either a comprehensive network with 30-60 minute headways, or a much more limited network with 5-15 minute headways.
The one choice they aren’t being given is to restore cuts made in bus funding.
In 2002. the VTA provided 1,508,300 revenue-hours of bus service. By 2013, service levels declined to 1,290,216 revenue-hours. The reason for the decline was to pay for very expensive expressway, LRT, and BART projects. The only logical choice is to reduce the highway spending, and to bring BART costs under control, in order to avoid eviscerating the bus network.
[…] but it’s a hobson’s choice (Systemic Failure) […]
So the number of revenue-hours has dropped by 15%. How does compare with the inflation-adjusted funding. In other words, is it possible that part of the reason for the decline was not to pay for expensive other stuff, but that the bus service itself became more expensive?
No, funding declined in real dollar terms. VTA spent $220 million for bus operations in 2002 vs. $225 million in 2013. Those figures don’t account for inflation. Using the CPI calculator, $220 million is equivalent to $284 million in 2013 dollars.
And while bus operations did get more expensive (higher wages, etc), sales tax revenues and population was growing at a higher rate.
This chart suffers from the problem of an arbitrary starting year. If you look from 2005 to 2015, ridership is tracking population (with a dip during the 2008-2009 recession). Sure, farebox ratio and ridership are low, but they have been that way for 10 years or even longer. Can we have a chart of VTA ridership in the 1980s and 1990’s to compare?
See Jarrett Walker: http://humantransit.org/2016/04/why-the-media-fixation-on-transit-is-failing-stories.html
Yawn, once again – another “expert” who can distinguish between operating money and capital/”New Starts” money that can never be used for bus service anyways.