Better bus
Not all bus lines are the same. On a METRO map, the 25 Richmond and the 34 Montrose are represented by the same kind of line. But the 25 comes every 15 minutes on weekdays and
20 on weekends; the 34 comes only every 45 minutes on a weekday and not at all on the weekends. The buses, stops, and signs look the same, but the two are really different grades of service because the routes have different levels of demand.
Last week, the METRO board went forward with another new grade of service. A “Quickline,” like a local bus route, will share traffic lanes with cars. But it will stop less often than a local bus, it will run more frequently, its stops will be better, and it will sometimes be able to “jump the queue” at traffic lights to gain time. And, perhaps equally importantly, it will be branded: a rabbit logo on buses and stops, a distinctive shelter design, and special silver buses. It will be immediately obvious that this is a different kind of bus service.
Quicklines will serve METRO’s busiest bus routes. But they won’t replace local service on those routes. The Quickline will serve the major stops; the regular bus will stop every few blocks as it does now. That makes the Quickline faster, so most riders will take it, even if they have to walk a bit further. But the local service will still be there, albeit less frequently.
The first Quickline route, which will start operating this year (probably August, according (pdf) to Frank Wilson), will serve the 2 Bellaire, from the rail connection at TMC Transit Center through Bellaire and out to Beltway 8, a total of 9 miles. It will run every 15 minutes and stop, on average, about once a mile, cutting 10 minutes off a trip that takes about 50 minutes by local bus. Metro plans similar service in other corridors, possibly from TMC to Palm Center, along Westheimer and along Gessner.
There is a well-known model for this service. LA’s much touted Rapid service is often called Bus Rapid Transit, but it is really improved bus service much like the Quicklines. It’s been enormously successful; the improved service is drawing riders from less frequent parallel routes and attracting new riders to transit. But the buses are still stuck in traffic, so they aren’t as fast or reliable as rail. LA has been building out its Rapid network at the same time it’s building rail, and the two have worked well together.
Incidentally, METRO is starting another new service (pdf) this week, opening a new park-and-ride in a movie theater parking lot off I-10 near Katy. It’s the westernmost park-and-ride in the METRO system. METRO’s easternmost park-and-ride, at San Jacinto Mall in Baytown, is also new; it opened in October as a joint venture between METRO and Harris County. And the outermost park-and-ride on 290, at Cypress, opened in September. Unfortunately, none of those service expansions were matched by expansions in HOV lanes, so the buses share traffic lanes with cars on the outer parts of their routes (and on the entire route to Baytown).
There’s been some concern that METRO’s focus on expanding rail might cause the bus system to be neglected. Until recently, METRO’s silence about the bus improvements promised in the 2003 referendum justified that concern. These announcements indicate otherwise, but they’re only a start.
The discussion starts in the forums. (Both images, by the way, are from METRO)
