The Next Stop: METRO's Podcast Episode 42: Plan my Route, How a Bus Route is Planned? Jim Archer: Part of the challenge with the job is we’re always having to make adjustments. Houston’s an everchanging city, so there’s nothing static about the job, and there’s nothing that—you don’t ever walk in and have a boring day. Every day is interesting or challenging or more. Laura Whitley: In a region with nearly 9,000 bus stops and a service area that covers more than 1,300 square miles, there’s a talented METRO team planning the routes. I’m Laura Whitley. In this edition of the Next Stop, we learn how the process works and why sometimes carefully crafted plans have to be changed in a matter of hours. [Introduction music plays] Laura Whitley: I’m pleased to welcome Jim Archer, METRO’s Director of Service Planning, Scheduling, and Evaluation, to the Next Stop. Thanks for joining us! Jim Archer: Thank you, Laura, for having me. Laura Whitley: So, I warned you before we got started that my very first question was going to be, you know, what does that all mean in that mouthful of your title? Can you kind of break it down for us, you know, not-so-savvy transit nerds? Jim Archer: Certainly. The Service Planning function is the function of designing bus routes, laying out where they’re going to go, where the bus stops are going to be. The Scheduling function is actually developing schedules that have sufficient running time to go from one end to the other and also making sure that there is connectivity so that buses arrive at roughly the same time so that that way people can make sufficient transfers. And then, the Evaluation group goes back and evaluates how well we did, and that’s part of the challenge with the job is we’re always having to make adjustments. Houston’s an everchanging city, so there’s nothing static about the job, and there’s nothing that—you don’t ever walk in and have a boring day. Every day is interesting or challenging or more. Laura Whitley: And despite all the planning and scheduling, there’s always new challenges and surprises that present themselves, but that makes a lot of sense. So, essentially, you’re responsible for the group that designs the plans for the routes, sets the schedules, and then goes back and makes sure it’s all working and makes tweaks and all of that. Have I got it? Jim Archer: That is correct. That is correct. And of course, during COVID, our workload has increased dramatically as we’ve been trying to respond to the needs first of all for social distancing and providing service for essential employees and then gradually restoring the service so that we could provide service for folks who are just trying to get back to a sense of normal, then trying to restore service for those who are returning to the office. Laura Whitley: Right, and you make a good point. I mean, you’re talking about COVID and really since March of 2020 and how you and all the other talented folks in your group have responded. Because in a perfect planning world, if you will, many of these plans and designs are made over, I would imagine, several months. I mean, this is a long process, not something that just happens overnight. Correct? Jim Archer: That is absolutely correct. In fact, one of the new routes that we’ll be introducing in the August service change is a Gulfton Circulator, and we actually started the process of working with the community on that Circulator in February of 2020. Obviously, we took a little interim wait for COVID, and then we picked up again to move forward subsequently. Yeah, sometimes we have a lot of time to plan. Sometimes, we don’t. One of the benefits for some of our group is the fact that we’ve also had to work through and develop short-term service changes for Hurricanes Rita, Ike, Harvey, and then also responding to other issues that have arisen, such as the ice storm earlier this year. How do you shut down service, and then how to bring it back? Those are all shorter-term. Obviously, now that we’re in the 73rd week of COVID, it’s been a little bit daunting. Laura Whitley: Yeah! And that’s a good point! And I know on some of the episodes I’ve done previously when we were looking at the response METRO’s had to the pandemic, I know present CEO Tom Lambert referenced those earlier emergencies and challenges as well, you know. And also, you certainly have experience—it isn’t always natural disasters but major events such as the Superbowl, the Astros World Series parade, and all types of things. When we’re talking about making decisions, and I’m even thinking back to the New Bus Network when that was put into place, what, I think, it was almost now six years ago—what are some of the like key drivers and considerations that you all think about as you—I guess in terms of the planning part of that and for the routes? Jim Archer: Thank you. That’s a great question. I mean, we’re looking at several different factors. When we’re working with existing routes, we’re looking at existing ridership. So, what does the ridership look like at a bus stop level, and in some cases, by time of day? Because that may determine whether or not we need to add trips at a particular time. Because Houston has such a diversity, we don’t always add trips during what people consider to be the normal peak. So, for example, our 102 Bush IAH, several years ago, we had to add trips around 2 o’clock in the afternoon because that’s when the shift change occurs at Intercontinental Airport. So, there were people who needed service to come back in. It’s not a traditional time, but it’s what we needed to look at. With New Bus Network, we had several very basic principles that we tried to use as our overriding nature. First of all, we wanted to provide service seven days a week. Prior to New Bus Network, we did have a very robust weekend service, and we wanted to make sure that we were serving people seven days a week as opposed to five or six. Secondly, we always look to ways in which we could straighten routes. Because again, if a route operates in a straight pattern, that means the bus can travel at a faster rate of speed. Obviously, when you have to turn, you have to slow down. That requires time. And when you slow down, by definition, then you can get fewer trips in the same amount of time. We also have to look at when we’re doing our scheduling how we assign operators. So, for example, when we did New Bus Network, we basically broke our system into three bus categories. A fourth has occurred subsequently. I’ll talk about that in a second. But with New Bus Network, those three categories were Red Routes, which are frequent routes, which means that we have a bus scheduled to run at least once every 15 minutes. So, you can go out to the corner to your bus stop and expect a bus at least every 15 minutes, with the New Bus Network, with those Red Routes. The second category were Blue Routes. Blue Routes were standard routes, so in those instances, we had a bus scheduled at least every 30 minutes, and both Red and Blue designations meant that these routes were designed to generate ridership. So, the focus of these routes was to bring in ridership itself. Now, the third category we worked with in New Bus Network is called Coverage, and it’s shown on our maps using the color green. Coverage basically means we’re trying to provide service to an area that we know has generally low ridership, generally poor infrastructure, and in many cases, an aging population. So, for example, one of the things that we had to deal with in New Bus Network were several bus routes that had very high ridership 20 or 30 years ago, but that ridership was tied to people who were making trips to work and from work and who had subsequently retired. So, they didn’t need those work-related trips, but they needed to have some type of bus service. So, instead of METRO getting ten rides per week—a trip to and from work five days a week—we were only getting one or two. So, the ridership dropped significantly, and so, we had to work a way to get them service, and so the first thing was to look at these fixed-route concepts that were Coverage, which means you have a bus once every 60 minutes. Then we expanded that to look at what’s called a “Community Connector.” Now, the difference between a Coverage Route and a Community Connector is that the Coverage Route has set bus stops, so a bus is going to go—you see a bus pole, you see a passenger shelter, you see a bench. There’s a sign that says, “This route comes here.” You can rely that the bus is going to stop there. But in the case of the Community Connector, this is more of a demand response-type service. So, our Community Connector routes have one or two anchor points. Those are locations where you can walk up and simply get on the bus, or you can call in and make what’s called a “Subscription” and ride anywhere within the zone, provided that it’s within the zone, and we’ll provide you with that bus service. Let me apologize—subscription is when you’re calling but making the same trip repeatedly. So, that would be for things like someone’s going for dialysis and they want to be picked up twice a week. They make one phone call, and they reserve that for two different times. So, walk up. We’ve also got call-in, and then you’ve got subscription. Those are the three ways. Now, recently, we have started a pilot program with an app, so now there’s a fourth way that you can use the Community Connector. And we’re in the process of trying to procure a permanent app so that that way we can use that throughout our community network entities. So, we have to factor all of this in as we’re looking at it, and then just for fun, we also have to look—we have different bus types. So, those different bus types can handle different levels of passenger loads. Our smallest bus would be the New England, and the New England is a 23-foot bus. It carries 12 passengers at a maximum. We use those primarily on our Community Connectors and also on routes that have very low ridership. Our basic bus is a 40-foot transit bus. The 40-foot transit bus has 34 to 38 seats, and those are assigned to most of our local routes. Local routes that have high ridership, however, we may assign a 60-foot articulated bus. Those are the accordion ones that people see that kind of mesh in the middle, and they have 57 seats. So, when you see one of those, those are assigned to routes that have high ridership. And then people are familiar with the fact that our Park and Ride routes largely have the 45-foot standard over the road coach with 55 seats. Laura Whitley: So, all of those considerations in terms of how frequent the bus comes, and then the type of vehicle that is utilized, can go into play in terms of when you’re planning and scheduling these routes. And given that, and that just how intentional the whole process is, it’s easy to understand, gosh, and really applaud you all in terms of how much you’ve had to adapt over the last 18 plus months, particularly responding to COVID. And then, I think, one question that comes into many folks’ minds is, you know, once you’ve decided what route is going to where and how frequent it will be based on these ridership patterns, how do you decide where the stops are going to be located? Jim Archer: METRO is engaged in a Long-Range Capital Program called “Universal Accessibility,” where we want to add sidewalks throughout our system. And one of the key aspects for putting in bus stops moving forward is that bus stops need to be at locations that are accessible. Meaning anybody can get there—somebody in a wheelchair, somebody that’s blind, any individual can get to that location and safely board a bus. We had over 9,000 bus stops before we started Universal Accessibility. So, right now, we have a number of bus stops that don’t meet that criteria, and quite frankly, we’re going to be engaged in a multi-year program to try to bring everything up to standard. So, that’s a long-range effort for us. Laura Whitley: Right, that’s part of the initiatives in METRONext. Jim Archer: That is correct. That’s part of METRONext, is to go ahead and make those types of changes. Yeah, during COVID, we had to try some experiments simply because we put out service. You know, the first thing we had to do was we were addressing workforce shortages, so we pulled everything back on weekdays to every 30 minutes, and then we restored service as ridership returned. But we found, for example, prior to COVID, we had two bus routes that were hooked together—the 50 Broadway and the 73 Bellfort—but the ridership returned more significantly on the 73 Bellfort. So, when we put in extra trips, what we found is we’re running extra trips up to Broadway that weren’t needed. They weren’t carrying people, and when you only have a set number of operators, it became important for us to separate the two routes at that point in time. So, now the 50 operates on its own. The 73 operates on its own. And that experiment worked very well. But not everything works quite as well, and so, we continue to go back to the drawing board. On Westheimer, we had identified that the majority of the overloads occurred between Gessner and Kirby. Laura Whitley: And when you say—I’m sorry to interrupt you—when you say “overloads,” what do you mean? Jim Archer: Thank you. I appreciate your clarification. Sometimes we get into transit jargon. And “overload,” in this case, meant that we had a 34-seat bus assigned to the 82 Westheimer, but for social distancing, we had constrained our seating and our passenger load capacity to 16 individuals. We were consistently getting some trips with more than 16 through this section. So, what we said was, “Okay. We’ll put in an overlay.” So, we put in an overlay between Gessner and Kirby. Laura Whitley: Like an extra ___ 15:40? Jim Archer: Yeah, but it only travels that portion of the route rather than the whole route to try to address just the section that had the situation with the overloads. Well, it hasn’t worked well. Customers haven’t adjusted to it, and so, in August, we’re going to get rid of that and return back to more of a normal pattern. And again, that’s something we have to face on a regular basis. We get a lot of assistance from the public, from the community, from elected officials, from community leaders on suggestions of things that we could look at it, and in many cases, we’re able to examine and consider for a future service change. Sometimes we don’t make those changes even though people think that we should. So, for example, we have a recommendation that was made about a month and a half ago to change a detour on one of our bus routes. But in order to do that, the bus would have to make a left-hand turn at a location that doesn’t have a traffic signal, which means that that bus could be stuck there for as long as traffic was traveling was in the opposite direction. That hurts our reliability, and if our service is unreliable, that hurts people trying to get to jobs, trying to get to childcare, trying to get to places they want to go. So, we’re not going to be doing that particular recommendation. But we looked into it because it was suggested, and we did the necessary research to be able to answer the question, “Thank you. We’ve looked at it. This is why we can’t do that.” But sometimes, what will happen is the opposite. We’ll have people make a suggestion, and it’s something that we have simply missed. Again, we’re looking at over 100 bus routes under a normal scenario, and as I say, 9,000 bus stops, and if we were pre-COVID, 9,000 daily trips, so you start to multiply that out—it’s a fairly complex process to try to go through. And, oh, by the way, people would like us to look at extending service further out or making adjustments through equipment, or let’s look at changing the span of service, which is the time between the first trip and the last trip. Laura Whitley: Right. Jim Archer: Or let’s look at the frequency. So, just a lot that we’re trying to work through. Laura Whitley: Well, and you realize the critical nature, and you mentioned that in terms as you consider the different recommendations—there is such a critical nature of this service. I mean, you truly are connecting, you know, people to their livelihoods, schools, medical care, and all of that. And you brought up an important point, and I wanted to ask you a bit, and that’s about public engagement. You know, what is the best way or what are some of the helpful ways for folks in the public to engage and to, you know, provide feedback and also, I guess, ideas in terms of the service and their needs? Jim Archer: Well, there are a number of different ways that people can look at it. Again, right now, we have three system-wide service changes a year, one in January, one at the end of school, which is generally June, and one at the start of school, which is generally August, and before we have those changes, we have public hearings. And public hearings are certainly opportunities for people to come down and express concerns or comments, or suggestions. Likewise, we have monthly Board Meetings, and people can come and speak at those Board Meetings. We have a customer call center, and they receive feedback a lot. Laura Whitley: And then when you were again talking about the Gulfton Circulator and this example, it also has, I think, another interesting hallmark, and that’s in terms of the people in the community working together collectively and then also working with other elected officials, other transit advocates, really looking at this and these needs for this community on a holistic level and then coordinating with METRO in that way. I mean, it was, again, very intentional and a process, not just necessarily one person but really using their collective voices and power. Jim Archer: That’s right. And the process is important to keep in mind. Sometimes we’ll get people who’ll make suggestions, and they want things to come in immediately. Well, like any other entity, we have a budget, and we have constraints that are fiscal. We have constraints in terms of the number of operators. We have constraints in terms of the number of buses. Likewise, there are certain things we can only do with service changes, and because we receive federal funding, we have to evaluate the changes that we do in terms of Title VI compliance, which is minority/non-minority, and in terms of environmental justice compliance. Laura Whitley: Again, you know, I’m just—when I talk with you and just listening through our conversation—there’s such a high level of, you know, intentional actions to, you know, map out and then plan these routes and this service that, I think, sometimes we all just sort of take for granted and just sort of expect that it’s there. So, it’s truly just amazing, quite frankly, what you guys do on a broader scheme, and certainly how you have adapted and continue to adapt over the coming months. I think I’d like to close out—because I know we touched on just briefly, but it is a bit a newer type of service that’s coming, and that’s with not just the Community Connectors but more using the app. I know that that is really being leveraged, isn’t it, in some places where, again, there was more of those Coverage-type routes to help be more responsive to those needs of those communities? Jim Archer: Yes. The benefit of the app is that it’s going to be able to allow us to be a bit more efficient in terms of our operation, as well as making it easier on the customer. Laura Whitley: Understood. Well, thank you so much for that. I appreciate all of your explanations and our conversation this morning. I don’t know about those listening, but I certainly feel slightly smarter about the world of transit planning than I did when I started talking to you right now. Jim Archer: We have a great staff here that do a wonderful job, and it’s been a real challenge as many of them have come on board during COVID. So, they’re having to learn how to make these adjustments and work with people, and we have 15 different locations. Today, I think I’ve got one other person in the office with me. So, we’re 14 different spots trying to coordinate everything and make service the best it can be for our customers. Laura Whitley: Absolutely. Well, you all certainly do that, and we all appreciate your commitment so much. Jim Archer, Director of Service Planning, Scheduling, and Evaluation—see, I got it all in, Jim—thank you so much for joining the Next Stop. Jim Archer: Thank you for having me, Laura. Have a great day. Laura Whitley: You too. [Music plays] Laura Whitley: That’s all for this edition of the Next Stop. I’m Laura Whitley. If you’d like to check out more episodes, you can find them on our website or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Google Play. And, if you could please do us a favor and leave a rating or a review, it’ll help us out a lot. Until next time, drive less, do more with METRO. [Music plays] Page 1 of 1