Schedule your transit for all day use.
Covid-19 has been a challenge for transit, but it also presents opportunities.
When the Covid pandemic first hit, there were all kinds of crazy things being said: “cities are doomed!”, “transit will never matter again!” and the like. And because of that, I think a lot of transit people are resistant to the idea that things might be changing in the way people work.
The reality is, for better or for worse, things are changing. Office vacancies are still elevated, and a lot of major employers have adopted hybrid workplace strategies — and honestly, these are not necessarily bad things!
One thing that will definitely get a future post written about it (so subscribe! it’s free!) is the idea that reducing the need for extreme peaks is way more efficient — I made a video about this towards the beginning of Covid, but I think it’s a topic that needs to be explored in much greater depth.
I’m also just not convinced that the average persons productivity is at its peak when they spend all their time at the office. As someone who has spent time working office jobs, the incidental interactions are great — but, they also can be incredibly distracting when you are trying to get work done.
Unfortunately, we are also seeing a decrease in stable formal employment, with the growth of things like the gig economy as well as other trends — like say YouTubers! If you’ve ever been curious, I certainly use transit to, well, get out and film other transit, but like a lot of people who don’t have a tightly defined work schedule, I avoid travelling at peak hours, which is probably a big part of why the peak commuter market is getting hammered so hard. If you can avoid travelling when transit is crowded, most delay prone, and possibly uncomfortable why wouldn’t you? At the same time, many key growth sectors like tech are already quite well set up to do more and more work remotely, so I do think a shift is likely to stay, and honestly? That’s good for the planet — trips that don’t bring people joy and make them happy that can be avoided probably should be.
During the worst periods of the pandemic, peak ridership was hurting a lot, and even now that things have returned to normal in a lot of ways peak ridership is still nowhere near where it previously was, and if Toronto’s GO transit (among many other systems) is anything to go off of; off peak, weekend, spontaneous, and occasional travel have truly surged (for GO specifically, weekend ridership has exceeded pre-pandemic highs). Despite this, some very bad habits seem to be emerging…
One of the most frustrating ones is the return to, or maintaining of — hyper peak-focused service patterns. The obvious example of this is North American commuter rail — I think, especially with poor peak hour ridership, the focus should not be to only provide peak hour service. Imagine you have a train line that currently offers four morning inbound trains before 9 AM and 4 evening outbound trains after 5 PM. I think reallocating resources so that you maybe have one traditional rush hour commuter oriented service in the morning and evening is fine, but why not also pair those trips with a counter-peak service, and then perhaps create midday and late night travel options? Sure, its a little less convenient if you want to get to the office for 9 because you have 1 train, but it also means you can leave early after lunch, or stay out late and go to a concert! If demand isn’t overloading peak-hour service, this feels way way more sensible to me.
Some systems have been doing this to an extent: BART certainly has a lot of issues, but it’s great to see that they are focusing on providing a consistent week-long service level that is less peaky than in the past — especially when that means much more palatable (if still too low) off-peak headways.
But there’s been less good stuff too… For example, GO transit has planned to reduce all-day frequency on the Lakeshore West line to all-day hourly from its current half-hourly (and pre-pandemic every 15 minutes!) for months to undertake tram related work (Hurontario LRT @ Port Credit) in Mississauga. This seems like throwing water on the successful ridership and absolutely an excessive service cut given the Lakeshore West has three tracks for most of its length! Established services should not be so quickly cut back, especially when they are running as busy as they are on Lakeshore West.
On a more positive note, I want to come back to the idea that this is an opportunity for peak-oriented transit systems. Right now, I know of a few rail lines that exist that provide little to no counter-peak service, but does provide bidirectional service during the rest of the day and weekends. This is bad, because counter-peak travel is something worth encouraging, and because it makes what should be a dead simple to understand service pattern hourly or half-hourly both ways all the time. I personally think the improved schedule simplicity, especially on a poorly patronized route, could make up for any reduction in peak ridership. Moreover, it also reframes the problem, from being about how to communicate a confusing service pattern (a confusing service pattern is just a confusing service pattern) versus how to provide a few extra services or a little extra capacity during busy times.
Of course, the 30,000 ft lesson here is also to not make the type of foolish, peak service oriented infrastructure decisions we’ve long made in North America. For example, the third LIRR mainline track that inherently operates better under a peaky service model! Or more downtown train storage facilities and the like.
As the great Chinese proverb says, “when the winds of change blow, some build walls, others build windmills!” — just replace walls with silly peak-oriented transit infra, and windmills with solid all day service!
Totally agreed. The days of 9 - 5 office days are over and were already over before COVID-19. Employers demand flexibility too. It's no good having 4 peak hour trains after 5pm if your employer tells you to stay back until 6:30pm to finish some work. Or to come in on Saturday. Or to come in at 8:00am for a meeting. All day transit is required.
That viva bus is actually on yonge not highway 7