BusGraphs

Using Arf for Route Planning Experimentation

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last month, I used arf’s network modification capabilities to develop a small restructure of King County Metro’s transit network in Seattle. This change to routes 3 and 11 produced an access gain, while reducing the overall amount of service time expended. To explore ways to reinvest the service time, I expanded arf’s route modification capabilities to support frequency changes and adding new stops.

With these capabilities, I created two changes that branched off of the baseline restructure of the previous post. The first proposal ups route 11’s frequency to every 15 minutes from 6 AM to 7 PM, allowing it to meet Seattle’s definition of frequent transit service. The second maintains the existing frequency, but extends route 11 to the Eastlake neighborhood, using streets that have not had transit service for 10 years. A third change combines the two. Subsequent sections of this post will address each change.

Changing Some Bus Routes with Arf

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A useful access analysis tool should allow analyzing hypothetical transit networks, not just existing ones. As such, these tools can modify transit routes and their schedules.

Consider Conveyal’s scenario editor, as shown in this demo,

Clipped from Conveyal’s product demo.

or this clip demonstrating Remix’s route editing functionality.

Clipped from this video.

While these tools accept modifications with a point-and-click interface¹, I take a different approach. My previous access analysis tools accepted a modifications file in a text format that is both machine- and human-readable². In March, I added basic network modification functionality to arf, using an updated version of this approach.

An Assortment of Comparative Maps

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

As a transit rider in Seattle, ten years ago was an exciting time. The expansion of the Link light rail to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington portended significant changes to King County Metro’s bus network. This was coinciding with my transition from a passive rider to someone interested in the design of public transit networks.

Back then, I began to appreciate access maps as useful for making comparisons when public transit networks are in flux. These same maps can also look backward to see how access has changed over time. I recently built three styles of sector-centered comparative access maps that use arf’s outputs, and will demonstrate them by comparing Seattle’s present day transit service to that which existed just before the University Link extension opened.

The first map uses a diverging color scheme to show the change in the number of times of day one can reach destinations, within a 30-minute time budget, from an origin at the cursor. The origin point can be locked in place by clicking, and released by clicking again.

A Sector Segment Map

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last August, I presented a map that could quickly show sector-centered access. That is, when considering a single start point and a fixed time budget, how often can one reach all other points within a region, when starting at that point at every minute of the day. This prototype map used reachability data produced by an early version of arf and clumsily combined it with spatial information extracted from running the Access Analyzer. After working on disentangling arf from the Access Analyzer late last year, and focusing on arf’s performance in January, I wanted to spend February expanding its visualization capacities beyond the region-wide access maps shown in the last two posts. The first product of this work expands on the sector-centered approach seen in the August prototype.

Arf Takes Manhattan

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve spend much of January improving arf’s performance. The 30-minute time budget access map for Washington state that used to take around 70 minutes now takes approximately 40 on my M1 2020 MacBook Air. A map of Seattle with the same parameters takes around eight. With the performance enhancements in place, I wanted to subject arf to a new trial: creating a 30 minute unweighted access map of New York City.

Relative amount of thirty-minute transit and walking access throughout New York City. Map data from OpenStreetMap.

Introducing Arf: Access, Raw & Fine

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Arf is a new tool for generating unweighted access analyses, like the ones seen in this blog. Its outputs have the same 80 meter spatial resolution as those generated with my previous access analysis tool, the BusGraphs Access Analyzer, but arf can assess areas of sizes on the order of US states, and runs on conventional personal computers rather than cloud computing infrastructure. This 30-minute transit and walking access map of Washington state took around 70 minutes to generate on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air laptop.

Relative amount of thirty-minute transit and walking access throughout Washington state. Map data from OpenStreetMap.

There's Already a Second Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a proposal to use Interstate 5 between Northeast Northgate Way and the Spokane Street Viaduct as the “second downtown tunnel” planned for Seattle in the Sound Transit 3 project (ST3). Between these two points, the entire highway would be converted into a transit corridor. This would require a feat of political courage and interagency cooperation, but would provide the exceptional public transit network that ST3 promised, while eliminating costly and disruptive portions of the project.

Insurgent Transit

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Human Transit, Jarrett Walker describes his consulting work as being a domain expert who asks communities questions about the transit networks that they want to build. The questions present two endpoints to a spectrum. Each end has advantages and disadvantages. The position a transit agency takes depends on what the community that it serves values; there are no wrong answers. Walker then can help design a transit network conforming to these positions. There are four overarching questions.

I propose a fifth question: cooperation or insurgence?

Frequency is Freedom. What is Span?

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been revisiting Jarrett Walker’s book Human Transit¹. Reading it crystalized the disjointed thoughts that I had as a transit rider into opinions on how public transit networks should operate. It is one of the most important books I have read, and I suspect that is true for many people with a stake in public transit.

I’m revisiting it by way of processing the response to my cost-neutral redesign of King County Metro’s network, which overlaid Seattle with 24/7 frequent service . It appeared in Seattle Transit Blog, where comments on it were more uniformly negative than I anticipated. These commenters are not fools. They recognized that widespread frequent overnight service would involve tradeoffs, like more crowding at rush hours, and fewer one-seat rides to population and activity centers like downtown and the University District. They insisted that riders would not favor this exchange.

An Access Map Prototype

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A network-wide access map colors sectors, uniform areas of a region, according to an access score. For an unweighted access measurement, the score corresponds to how often a rider originating in that sector can reach others throughout the region. But it doesn’t allow a transit rider with an interest in a specific sector to see exactly which destinations are within reach. The same data can generate a sector-centered access map that reveals this, so my maps allow transitioning between the network-wide and sector-centered modes. Unfortunately, it’s slow to the point of being unusable.

The Making of a Restructure: The End Result

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This year, my proposed, in-service time neutral restructure of transit in Seattle is appearing in Seattle Transit Blog. Check it out there!

The Making of a Restructure: Downtown Seattle

Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Trolleybuses on 3rd Avenue” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Even if all King County Metro’s “commuter” bus routes were shunted to Link Stations, downtown Seattle would still teem with buses. Many of the transit routes that run entirely within Seattle serve downtown, converging on Third Avenue to create a transit mall. In this proposal, as with past ones, this stretch of road would go from having the greatest amount of bus traffic in the city to being nearly devoid of it. But why mess with this longstanding feature of Seattle’s transit network?

The Making of a Restructure: The "Commuter" Routes

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“KCM 6895 in Downtown Seattle” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

For the third year, I’m proposing a full network, in-service time neutral restructure of Sound Transit and King County Metro’s public transit service in Seattle. This year, I’m adjusting my approach slightly. Previously, after I established a budget of service hours available, I would test large, wide-ranging batches of changes against it, repeating this until I was close to the line without going over. This time, I’m parceling changes by theme, in hopes of better appreciating the savings and costs of different types of changes.

Also new this year is that I am balancing the service time budget not in terms of expenditure within Seattle, but throughout King County¹. The impetus for this is a change in how I’m computing access², but it’s fundamentally a more accurate assessment of expenditure regardless. The in-service time from segments of transit trips that crossed the Seattle border were unaccounted for in previous attempts. By expanding service-time measurement to the county level, this is only a concern for portions of service that leave the county, of which there are far fewer. This change is particularly germane to the routes featured in this post.

A Love Letter to the Link

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“U-Link Grand Opening” by Atomic Taco is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Want a one-sentence summary of every post in this blog? “Here is some data that argues for a radical change in the policies of public transit agencies.” This theme belies my overall satisfaction with the public transit in my life. Yes, I’d like to get places faster and wait less, especially at night and on weekends. But I don’t feel isolated from the city’s opportunities without a car, and it’s a critical component of how I control my cost of living. My life would be worse without it. I can demand improved transit, while still recognizing the great merit of what exists today.

In that spirit, access measurement can be used to celebrate something good, rather than to denounce detrimental policies. And in Seattle, Sound Transit’s Link 1 Line is good.

What's Wrong with Seattle's Streetcars?

Sun, 16 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“First Hill Streetcar on Display” by Atomic Taco is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Ever since I read this Seattle Times article on the South Lake Union Streetcar, I haven’t been able to get the phrase “streetcar opponent Eugene Wasserman” out of my mind. Homer’s works use epithets (in the term’s original sense) to describe an existential characteristic of an entity. I’m sure this Eugene Wasserman is a multifaceted human being, but in this article’s story, he is a character in the same manner as “swift-footed Achilles.” So it’s not intended as a personal attack when I say that I find the idea of a “streetcar opponent” to be absurd, and emblematic of how stupid discourse around streetcars tends to be. When thinking about what differentiates the value of a transit route, the type of vehicle operating it doesn’t matter that much, compared to the route’s measurable properties. Inhabiting the role of “streetcar opponent” just doesn’t make sense.

That being said, as I’ve developed some access-based measurements of public transit routes, Seattle’s streetcar routes have stood apart. They are comfortably worse than all King County Metro bus routes that primarily serve Seattle, when considering two such measurements, the percent replaceable and journeys per in-service second. Given that, is being a “streetcar opponent” actually a sensible position?

The Routeshed

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“King County Metro Route 40 | NFI D40LF | Ballard (Leary Ave NW @ NW Market St)” by Han Zheng is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

After working in tech, where force-feeding disruptive changes to users is commonplace, the world of public transit planning feels like a group of indecisive friends struggling to decide on a place to eat. Modifications to bus routes involve consulting a litany of stakeholders. Those aren’t just riders, but businesses and residents along the route, as well as groups representing other road users. For the RapidRide J Project, a joint effort of King County Metro and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) that is converting the former’s route 70 to a Bus Rapid Transit line, outreach started in 2015. Unfurling the Outreach Conducted to Date section on its project page reveals almost 100 sessions. The commonality among all of them is that they involve parties who are geographically close to the course of the modified route.

How Replaceable are Seattle's Transit Routes?

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

“Seattle AM General trolleybus downtown, 1986” by Steve Morgan is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ridership-based route productivity measurements—those which compare a route’s average number of riders to its cost of operation—are common within transit planning. Unproductive routes will be the first considered for elimination when funding is tight. Those that perform well may merit additional service when the budget supports expansion. I have previously argued that ridership-based measurements are, at best, incomplete for these purposes. There are factors beyond ridership that determine how much impact the elimination of, or investment in, a route will have. Transit routes have varying amounts of capability, regardless of how many people choose to take advantage of it. The transit agencies that I’m familiar with entirely neglect this factor, though, perhaps because they lack a way to quantify it. Measuring access offers a solution. While this style of analysis has become increasingly common at the network level, using it to compare the contributions of routes within a network has not.

Accounting for Elevation

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Seattle hills” by chrisostermann is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I’ve recently improved my access analysis software to adjust walking speed based on change in elevation. The use of a constant walking speed, regardless of terrain, in previous analyses opened them to legitimate criticism, especially in hilly Seattle. A walking model can now be selected when computing an access analysis. At this time, there are two options: the original constant-speed model, and one that attempts to characterize how an average person navigates changes in elevation. Obviously, this is not a complete solution to the problem of accurately modeling how people get around. After all, walking speed is affected by elevation change in different ways for different people, and, for some, walking is not how they get around at all. Allowing for any variation is merely the first step on a path toward the ability to model the experience of any transit rider.

Nerd Christmas

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Jackknifed Articulated Buses” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I’ve released the source code for the access analysis system that I have built to produce the maps and data in these posts. It resides in a collection of repositories, and basic setup instructions for deploying it onto Amazon Web Services are provided. All source is released under the GNU Public License v3.0.

A New Kind of Map for Transit Access

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“King County Metro Route 8 | NFI XDE60 | Madison St @ MLK Jr Way” by Han Zheng is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Transit access is frequently depicted with isochrone maps. Given a starting point, time of day, and time budget, determine all the places that can be reached within that budget using transit and walking. These maps are not a new concept, with examples dating to the late 1800s. This site’s glossary depicts one of Melbourne, Australia from the 1910s as an example. Public transit consultant Jarrett Walker uses them aptly to explain the idea of access as a “wall around your life”. The bounds of the isochrone form this wall. Improvements to transit networks expand the area inside of it. It’s a compelling, understandable image.

Route Productivity Redux

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“UW HUB Stop” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This is a revised examination of a measurement of how individual transit routes contribute to overall access in Seattle. The first attempt was subject to a computational error that caused incorrect figures to be reported for certain routes. This iteration fixes that issue, and also uses updated schedules for King County Metro and Sound Transit that will take effect on September 14th.

The first version was presented in a series of parts. In each part, I chose a group of thematically similar routes and computed five measurements for them. I now find this approach to be somewhat clunky. These measurements don’t have clear “good” or “bad” values; they are only useful in comparison. Thus, it was difficult to meaningfully evaluate the routes chosen in the early part of the series. This revision presents all routes at once.

A First Look at Metro's September 2024 Service Change

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“RapidRide coach 6000 prototype” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Twice a year, King County Metro revises its bus service. Most of the time, the revisions are small. Fluctuations in funding and the workforce may cause a few trips to be added or deleted, and construction projects may necessitate minor changes to routes. Often, the service revision is a non-event for riders, and the access implications are miniscule.

When Metro does make big changes, they’re typically in response to external factors. On September 14th, the agency will make its most substantial set of modifications in a few years. Sound Transit’s Lynnwood Link extension is opening at the end of August, and some Metro routes in North Seattle and Shoreline will change to connect to the new stations. Also, the construction of transit-priority features on Madison Street will be complete, enabling the launch of the RapidRide G Line. Some routes in that line’s vicinity will see changes as well. Amidst these additions and modifications are deletions of bus service from some corridors. This is a move that the agency has typically seemed loath to make. Often, cuts like this appear in early versions of a service revision, only to be rolled back when the agency receives complaints. While the deletions typically are intended to enhance service elsewhere, transit customers are loss-averse, and Metro is usually sensitive to negative feedback to a fault. In this case, some significant cuts survived several rounds of scrutiny.

Last week, Metro updated its GTFS schedules to incorporate the forthcoming service change. That allowed me to compute access measurements that reflect what riders in Seattle will experience when the new routes start running. If they are to be believed, riders are in for a mixed bag. For a service change that finally makes investments in new service after a pandemic and workforce shortages, that’s disappointing.

What If No Buses Crossed the Fremont Bridge?

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

When the annual Fremont Solstice Parade celebrates the arrival of summer, King County Metro must reroute its buses around it. Routes 31, 32, 40, and 62 serve Fremont, and the parade forces them off their typical paths.

I was intrigued by the detours. The routes weren’t just avoiding the parade, they were bypassing the Fremont Bridge entirely. Mass transit has used the Fremont Bridge since its opening in 1917. It was built with two lanes of streetcar tracks on it. In spite of this precedent, I couldn’t help but wonder if Metro’s service could be better if no routes crossed it at all.

Reviving a Restructure

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“King County Metro buses at Northgate Station” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This is an updated proposal for transit service in Seattle that exceeds King County Metro’s definition of frequent service on all routes 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Compared to its predecessor, it incorporates some changes to mitigate potential overcrowding, and, more importantly, uses a corrected budget of in-service transit hours. Correctly assessing, and holding to, this budget is critical for this proposal. In-service hours drive agency operating costs. As tempting as it is to imagine what a better-funded King County Metro could accomplish, I fear that not holding to a budget would push a proposal that is already ambitious and challenging into the realm of the totally impractical. As the budget of in-service hours is about 12% less than previously thought, the resultant route map looks sparser. Some bus routes that many people use daily would disappear, without direct replacement, under this proposal.

Removing existing routes is bound to be unpopular. Why consider it when running routes with uniform headways throughout the day and night is unheard of among transit agencies? I assert that their choice not to do so contributes to automobile dependence. I made this argument in more detail when I debuted the initial proposal. In short, if a person fears that relying on public transit will eventually leave them in a situation where they desperately need to make a trip, but can’t in a reasonable amount of time, they will prioritize purchasing a car. Once a person owns a car, the marginal cost of each use is low, compared to the fixed acquisition and maintenance expenditures. It will get used even for trips that could be reasonably made with transit. The increased congestion undermines transit that shares right-of-way with private vehicles. It can even hinder attempts at constructing dedicated right-of-way, since construction decisions will favor minimal traffic disruption over optimal station placement. As unusual as uniform frequency may seem to a transit planner, I believe that it is a necessary ingredient in a transportation system where fixed-route public transit is intended to largely supplant, not supplement, private vehicle use.

Mea Culpa: Previous In-Service Times are Inaccurate

Tue, 11 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“The sorry bus” by waferboard is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Due to a software error, the in-service time amounts computed for transit networks in previous posts are inaccurate. Posts where an access measurement is used on its own are not affected. When access is expressed in terms of the amount of in-service time—whether for the entire network or an individual route—this quantity may be incorrect. In specific, these posts are impacted:

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 6

Thu, 16 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“KCM 7032 on Broadway” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

This installment of the access-based route productivity series focuses on four routes that serve Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, but are otherwise quite varied. Three of these routes skirt downtown, but one passes through Capitol Hill on its way there. Two meet Metro’s definition of frequent, one runs less frequently but all day, and one is the rare example of a peak-only route not oriented around downtown. The variation continues in the positions of routes 8, 9, 11, and 60 within Metro’s ridership-oriented route productivity measurements, and my access-based ones.

Would Uniform Frequency Ruin Transit Commutes?

Mon, 13 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“How many buses can you count in this photo?” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Decisions in public transit are often framed as tradeoffs. Should transit service cover a broader area, or should fewer routes run more frequently? What times of day, or days of the week, should see the greatest allocation of service? Rarely will one outcome be superior to another in all ways, for all people. This is the unfortunate reality when limited funding is a hard constraint.

An access measurement comparison, in its most condensed form, doesn’t present an obvious tradeoff. The consequences of any decision are rendered in the form of a single score. Good decisions increase the score, bad decisions decrease it. Of course, this is an oversimplification. The overall access measurement is the composition of many scores. An agency may achieve its greatest overall access by concentrating all of its routes into a section of its service area, but those who must leave that section will be justifiably upset.

The restructured transit network for Seattle that I produced—with uniform frequency meeting or exceeding King County Metro’s definition of frequent service on all routes, all day, every day—increased overall access while using no more in-service hours than the existing network. I nevertheless sought to be cognizant of how this would affect access throughout the city. While some parts of Seattle would see a decrease in access, the losses would be neither severe nor widespread. That still doesn’t cover every way that a restructure could disparately impact riders.

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 5

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“65th and Latona, 1956” by Seattle Municipal Archives is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Measuring a route’s access-based productivity involves creating a hypothetical transit network in which the route doesn’t exist. For the two routes in this installment of the series, elimination is anything but hypothetical. In preparation for the Lynnwood Link extension, King County Metro will be revising its transit service in North Seattle and Shoreline. Routes 20 and 73 are technically being replaced by new routes 61 and 77, not deleted. In reality, significant portions of their paths through Seattle are losing transit service entirely.

In my 12 years in Seattle, I’ve observed that Metro is reluctant to entirely remove transit service from corridors. The route serving a corridor may change, based on a desire to connect neighborhoods to different resources (typically new Link stations), but total elimination is a rare proposition. When initial plans have included route deletion, they are often walked back, at least in part. The cuts to routes 20 and 73 have survived the full public comment and county council approval processes.

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 4

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Seattle Route 44 | NFI XT40 | NE 45th St @ 12th Ave” by Han Zheng is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

When I last looked at access-based route productivity, I found that a sample of Metro’s conventional bus routes nearly-categorically outperformed a selection of trolleybus routes. The type of vehicle wasn’t the only difference between the two groups, though; they each had a geographic bias. The trolleybus routes all serve Queen Anne Hill; the conventional buses connect downtown Seattle and neighborhoods to its north by way of the Aurora Bridge.

I previously warned about the negative consequences of using mode to judge the effectiveness of transit routes. But the trolleybus routes considered to this point are less valuable than the conventional routes. The reasons for that are, plausibly, due to the infrastructure that underpins them. It would not be wise, though, to rely on an incomplete and skewed result like this to make sweeping conclusions about trolleybuses as a mode. An assortment of King County Metro’s routes run under trolley wire, and there’s nothing about that that condemns them all to ineffectiveness. To demonstrate this, I calculated the same set of access-based route productivity metrics for all of the remaining trolleybus routes.

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 3

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“KCM 6086 at Aurora & Galer” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The routes in this update of the access-based route productivity series all cross the Lake Washington Ship Canal using the Aurora Bridge. Routes 5, 28, and the E Line share a common path out of downtown Seattle, cross the bridge, and then diverge. They are much more straightforward than the routes in the last installment; they largely lack the intra-route variation, twists and turns, and overlaps of the previous batch. There is a longer version of route 28 that runs during peak commute times. Aside from that, these routes basically correspond to one sequence of stops, in contrast to the aforementioned route 3, and its mess of variants.

Another thing that differentiates these routes is that they are run with conventional buses, rather than the trolleybuses used on the routes¹ that have been analyzed thus far. Overall, I think that vehicle type—referred to as “mode”—gets overblown in public transit planning. Planners associate different rider behaviors with mode, rather than characteristics like frequency or dedicated right of way. In some cases, the mode does influence that nature. There is a stark difference in the access-based route productivity measurements between this batch of routes and the previous ones, and perhaps something about the infrastructure that underpins them does play a role.

Overfull or Full of It? Part 1

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Double Articulated Trolley Bus” by Kecko is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

When trying to solve a complicated problem, I find it useful to ignore obvious constraints at first. It’s obvious that a transit vehicle cannot hold an infinite number of people. Yet when I proposed a redesign of King County Metro’s transit network in Seattle with frequent, 24 hour, seven day per week service, that is exactly what I did. I find that being confronted with a large number of constraints early on encourages an overly conservative end goal.

Beyond the objective of uniformly frequent service, only one constraint governed my redesign. I did not want the new network to increase the number of person-hours required to operate the system’s transit vehicles. This is the predominant expense of transit agencies. Keeping this net-neutral separates a pragmatic proposal from a fantasy. All other constraints could be sorted out later. Thinking in this way produced a network that doesn’t resemble typical transit service, though a rider could easily see the benefits.

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 2

Wed, 21 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“Route 2 bus and Spring St traffic” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I’m continuing to explore access-based route productivity measurements by examining four routes that, like route 1, serve Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. Routes 2, 3, 4, and 13 make their way up its eponymous hill. These are some of the quirkiest routes in King County Metro’s system. The former three are putatively long routes connecting downtown Seattle with mostly-residential neighborhoods on either end, but run a variety of shortened trips. Meanwhile, route 13 is linked with some, but not all, abbreviated route 2 trips. It might be more pragmatic to think of these as six shorter routes with a common trunk downtown, but that’s not how Metro treats them. It evaluates the productivity of each route in its totality, so I will do the same. How do these routes compare when it comes to access-based route productivity measurements?

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 1

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I received a package from Amazon the other day, and I noticed something hidden under the shipping label. My first full-time job was writing software for its warehouse operations, and I had a passionate love-hate relationship with it. I had to take a closer look.

PackTypes! I remember those! Without delving too much into the minutiae of Amazon’s warehouse operations, they’re broad categories of packaging. Back then, I saw their use in enforcing appropriate packaging as clunky and inflexible. In my view, the solution was to relegate the PackType concept to the dustbin of history, in favor of granular packaging instructions that would impose restrictions on a shipment by shipment basis. I wrote design documents for this. I navigated the web of systems that referenced PackType and proposed migration plans for each one. I advocated for it as an organizational priority whenever I had the ear of management.

Looking Back at 2023

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

“King Street Station and the Stadiums” by Oran Viriyincyis licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I listen to the Effectively Wild baseball podcast religiously. Generally, though, I despise sports commentary. I associate it with red-faced former athletes ranting about heart, hustle, and generalities concerning who’s a winner and who’s a loser. They recycle a tiresome collection of arguments, invariably returning to the trope that anyone who didn’t play the sport professionally can offer no insight. Effectively Wild is different.

Seattle Could Have 24/7 Frequent Service; King County's Priorities Seem to Lie Elsewhere

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I initially wrote this op-ed for the The Stranger. That publication passed on it, citing the busy election endorsement season. I then submitted it to The Urbanist, where it was rejected as a “too extreme of a version of the argument.” While the publisher’s feedback did highlight the risk of overcrowding under the restructure, I felt that it largely disregarded the benefits of transit service that makes journeys throughout the city uniformly convenient, amidst concerns of low ridership and farebox recovery on certain trips. I thought that transit service like this would be compelling to Seattle’s progressive and urbanist press. I plan on reflecting on that in a subsequent post, but, for now, I want to make this piece publicly available. I still think that it is an idea worthy of study.

“44 Terminal near Ballard Locks” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the 12 years that I have lived in Seattle, I can’t remember a time when it has felt more bleak to be a transit rider. I find the car-free life to generally be a happy one. In exchange for a little patience, planning, and pliability, I pay a fraction of the typical American’s largest expense after housing. I haven’t worried about parking spaces, oil changes, or gas prices in seven years. The downside is that this leaves me, and those for whom this lifestyle is not a choice, at the mercy of decision makers who can lose sight of what’s important for running useful transit service. That is happening now for Seattle’s transit riders. I find this uniquely frustrating. In my estimation, there is a way for King County Metro, with its present resources, to run frequent service at nearly every current transit stop in Seattle, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, but its leadership seems disinterested in going down this path.

What's the Frequency, Metro?

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“King County Metro Rapid Ride New Flyer DE60LFR 6085” by S.S. Sol Duc is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I recently received feedback critical of the Seattle transit network restructure that I previously proposed. It raised concerns about overcrowding during peak travel times—those associated with the commutes for a traditional 9 to 5 office job. My restructure provides uniform frequency on each route throughout the day. Presently, King County Metro and Sound Transit run extra trips beyond the normal frequencies on some routes during these times. In theory, riders distribute themselves among the additional trips, increasing the capacity of the system at the heaviest-traveled times.

I understand this point, but still think it should be questioned. Even with additional trips, a lot of people could still want to travel at the same time, resulting in a crowded bus, followed by a nearly-empty one. Even in that scenario, though, it’s nice that people who can’t or choose not to board the packed bus don’t have to wait as long until the next one comes. I also feel that Seattle’s local transit agencies don’t approach the crowding problem with mechanisms beyond frequency. Different vehicle layouts and passenger arrangement staff can better utilize limited space. Nevertheless, I must acknowledge that there is a physical limit to how many people can fit in a single vehicle. In my proposal, I tried to account for this by giving the Link 1-Line 8-minute frequency and select other routes, including Rapid Rides, 10-minute frequency, on account of their popularity.

All Models are Wrong, But Is Modeling Access as a Function of Time Budget Useful?

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“City bus, 1953” by Seattle Municipal Archives is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

The contention that the average commute duration has remained constant over time, and is independent of cultural differences and the built environment, underlies Marchetti’s constant. Technological changes might determine how far one can go, but the time allotted remains the same. That allotment is thought to be an hour total, or 30 minutes each way. I came across Marchetti’s constant early in my exploration of transit planning, and my analyses typically use a time budget of 30 minutes. That being said, I never made an explicit decision that I would use that time budget because it’s Marchetti’s constant. That 30 minutes seemed like a reasonable amount is probably influenced by having encountered it, though.

In spite of that choice, I simply don’t like the idea of assessing the quality of transit using a parameter justified by Marchetti’s constant. That a preferred amount of commuting time is built into human nature seems preposterous. While it’s interesting that this average value shows a persistence over circumstance and time, is there any merit to the average value itself? It feels like the sort of average that folds a diversity of individual preferences into a single, flawed description of a human stripped of agency. There are plenty of people who will tolerate longer commutes, and plenty who would balk at devoting an hour per day to it, and plenty whose tolerance varies depending on the current priorities in their lives. There are trips that people need and want to take that are not part of commutes. How long should be considered tolerable for those? Contemplating what people collectively “prefer”, “are like”, or “will do” seems to inform decision making in the transit planning field, but individuals, not populations, make the choice to board a transit vehicle.

Scaling Up: An Access Map of King County

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Entering King County on WA SR 410” by Joe Mabel is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I grew up in Massachusetts. When I go back and spend a day in “Boston”, it might actually involve being in Brookline, Cambridge, Medford, Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, and Revere. That is not my relationship with Seattle and the municipalities around it. Sometimes I don’t leave its boundaries for months at a time. Much of what I need and want to do is located within the city limits. That’s not true all the time, but it’s true often enough that it heavily influences the way that I think about measuring transit access in Seattle. I presuppose that a person in Seattle mostly cares about getting around Seattle. The access analyses of the city that I produce measure the ability to do that.

Making trips within Seattle is, of course, not everyone’s priority all of the time. Looking at access at the city level is also a somewhat awkward way to analyze transit in this area. Seattle does not run or plan the transit service located within it. It provides some funding and participates in the planning process, but most transit in the city is under the purview of King County. Sound Transit, operating the Link Light Rail, exists at the level of a multi-county consortium. City-level access analysis feels like the most instructive tool for evaluating everyday transit quality, but it’s unlikely to be the most relevant tool for the agencies making the decisions. Recognizing that, I produced a thirty-minute transit and walking access analysis for King County. I feared this would be impractically slow and expensive—a fear that was neither entirely born out nor totally meritless. There are caveats to calculating and considering access for the county that are not exposed at the city level.

The Aftermath

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Shattered” by Wade Rockett is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

On September 2nd, King County Metro enacted its plan to suspend or reduce the frequency of 20 routes. Faced with a shortage of operators and mechanics, it could not reliably operate its existing service. Meanwhile, I proposed a reimagined transit network for Seattle, subject to the same service hour constraints. In contrast to Metro’s plan, it achieved greater access than Metro’s pre-reduction network. With schedules for the reduced service now available and running, it’s possible to analyze the exact access implications of the service reductions.

A Seattle Transit Restructure by the Numbers

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Old Style Metro Bus Stop Signs” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the last post, I presented a restructured transit network for Seattle. Overall, the new network, versus that of an existing weekday, improves access by 19.7%, while reducing the amount of service by 13.9%. In theory, this would allow King County Metro to operate transit service at least every 15 minutes, on nearly all the current transit corridors in Seattle, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, while still accounting for its current labor shortage. To accomplish this, the restructure eliminates service that appears duplicative. Most notably, rather than having many bus lines go through a downtown already served by the Link 1-Line, routes are altered to serve Link stations that would allow the trip to continue there. It would be an adjustment for transit riders in Seattle, but one that would improve the ability to use transit to reach destinations throughout the city.

The 19.7% access increase throughout Seattle is an average, and those can hide information. It would be hard to accept a network restructure that concentrated all the improvement in one area, at the expense of many others. A positive change in average could indicate that is happening, instead of a more desirable across the board increase. The access map is useful to see that spatial distribution, but it’s hard to look at two different maps and make comparisons. I wanted to look at the restructure in a different way. In previous posts, I have constructed a variety of measurements based on access. This post applies them to the restructured transit network.

How to Cut Service by 22% and Boost Access by 13%

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Buses in front of Benaroya Hall” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

King County Metro is facing a labor shortage. Due to a lack of operators and mechanics, on September 2nd, 20 routes will be either suspended or modified to run less frequently. Routes have been chosen based on low ridership or already-high frequency, with the rationale that this will negatively impact the fewest riders. Service hours will be reduced by 3.8%.

Canceling and lowering the frequency of routes is a pragmatic way for King County Metro to decisively deal with a labor shortage. It’s also an approach that necessarily reduces the ability to access destinations via transit. I’m considering a different one. My previous examination of access across cities has convinced me that Metro’s allocation of transit service hours is subpar. By considering options beyond cancelations and frequency reductions, there could be a way to reduce the amount of service that doesn’t negatively impact overall access. This is an experiment in completely restructuring King County Metro’s transit routes in Seattle.

Seattle's Transit Agencies Can Do Better

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Railroad terminals Northern Pacific – Great Northern – Chicago Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific and Union Pacific, Seattle, Washington” by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

After I posted A Journey on the Seven Seats, a reader noted that while the post acknowledged that some multi-seat journeys would be infeasible if any transit vehicle were running slightly late, the methodology used to count these journeys did nothing to exclude them. Since I stated that a transit rider wouldn’t typically consider such a risky itinerary, I should have found a way to model what a rider would consider, incorporating information like the variability of actual arrival times. I understand the reader’s point. If I were building a trip planning tool, like the transit directions feature of Google Maps, I know that it would frustrate users if it suggested itineraries that were regularly undone by minor lateness.

Trip planning is not the purpose of these access analyses, though. My goal in conducting them is to highlight ways in which transit is, and isn’t, effective in connecting origins and destinations. This is done with the thought that the results can inform attempts to restructure public transit networks, allowing access to more destinations more often. When the matter of what some hypothetical normal rider is willing to do creeps into access measurement, I believe that its efficacy in guiding restructures is actually diminished.

A Journey on the Seven Seats

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Sound Transit, Metro, ST transfer slip (Purple A)” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Transfers have been on my mind. To me, they’re just a normal part of the transit rider’s experience—no different than taking an unprotected left turn when driving a car. I’m not going to go out of my way to make one if I don’t have to, but if it’s part of the fastest path to my destination, I’m not going to give it a second thought. I won’t deny there is some risk and inconvenience, but those do not override the desire to reach the destination as soon as possible.

When I talk to occasional transit riders, I often experience a type of culture shock about transfers. They’ll mention, at times apologetically¹, driving or taking an Uber to some place because there’s no bus route or train line that could get them there. That they refer to a singular one of these is weird to me. A public transit system is a network of interconnected routes; it’s unreasonable to expect all origin destination pairs to have a single route connecting them.

Which Way to the Beach?

Tue, 09 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Seattle in Black & White: Alki Beach I” by JoeInSouthernCA is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Last week, there was a two-day stretch of summer-like weather in Seattle, and all I could think about was the beach. Swimming has always been one of my favorite summer activities. I grew up spending parts of the summer on Massachusetts’s South Shore, swimming in temperate water on sandy ocean beaches. When I moved to Seattle, I knew I was giving up convenient access to beaches like that. In the last few years, I’ve adjusted my expectations and come to appreciate the rocky shores of Lake Washington and the exhilarating cold of Puget Sound. I no longer let the comparison to the beaches of my childhood impede my enjoyment of the beaches of Seattle. A second impediment remains, this one in the built environment, rather than the natural one. Serving the beaches of Seattle does not appear to be a priority for the agencies that operate transit in the city.

A Measurement Conundrum in Eastlake (and Beyond)

Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Metro 2518 on Eastlake Avenue” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Nearly 12 years ago, I sat at a table near the front windows of Pazzo’s in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood and confirmed plans to tour some nearby apartments. As I ate my calzone, I noted the route 70 buses that passed by on Eastlake Avenue East. I considered living near a bus route to be a necessity, but I thought of this requirement in unsophisticated terms. Any bus line would do. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate that the transit service running through Eastlake was frequent. One’s proximity to frequent transit service is typically a reasonable heuristic for assessing one’s ability to use transit as a primary means of travel; it’s one that I learned to employ as my use of transit grew. From the perspective of proximity to frequent transit, Eastlake seems like a good place to be a transit rider. The problem is that from a more sophisticated transit access standpoint, Eastlake is below average in Seattle.

Exploring Exceptionality

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“KCM 6971 with Mariners advertising at Convention Place Station” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Whenever I talk about the way that I measure transit access, I run into a problem. The numbers are horrendous. Their magnitudes don’t line up with human-scale quantities. Consider some examples from the analysis in the last post. The number of possible journeys is in the low trillions. The total composite score works out to be a hair over 20 sextillion, a number that sounds fake. It doesn’t get better when expressing access as a ratio between the number of completed and possible journeys. Sectors around the Madison Park terminal of route 11—a reasonably frequent route—have ratios with three zeroes to the right of the decimal point. The purpose of the last two access analyses has been to evaluate whether the transit service of a sector is exceptionally good relative to the entire region. Numbers like these lack the innate sense of scale to communicate that assessment clearly.

Could the Most Transit-Accessible Place in Seattle Not Be Downtown?

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Link light rail ad at Sea-Tac Airport” by Oran Viriyincy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

As I was running the access analysis supporting Of Buses and Ballot Boxes, I encountered something that fascinated me. It wasn’t relevant to the piece itself, so I didn’t emphasize it there, but I knew it had to be the next thing I investigated.

I needed a way to test my suspicion that the ballot box designated by King County Elections as serving downtown was far less transit-accessible than other points in the downtown core. My analysis would divide Seattle into a grid of 80 meter by 80 meter sectors, and score them using a transit access measurement. Sorting the sectors by their score would allow me to compare the one containing that ballot box to others in downtown Seattle, which I knew, for sure, would dominate the top of the list.

Of Buses and Ballot Boxes

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

“Voted! Please get out there and do the same!” by Aaron Gustafson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

I’m a last-minute voter, so I avail myself of King County’s ballot drop boxes. In the waning days of an election cycle, a ballot dropped in a mailbox might not get postmarked in time to count. Last election day, I was looking for a drop box near my place of work in downtown Seattle. I was surprised to find none in what I would consider the core of downtown. The walk down to South King Street and 2nd Avenue South wasn’t onerous, but it left me with a question.

The Route 20 Problem

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“KCM 2870 in SODO” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

In 2015, I became fascinated by King County Metro’s efforts to restructure its bus network in anticipation of the opening of two new Link Light Rail stops. At the same time, I found out about isochrone maps and the larger idea of access in transit. While I was creating software to measure the latter, the former served as a motivator and test case. I hoped that I’d be able to evaluate Metro’s proposed alternatives, come up with some on my own, and present objective measurements of which was best. As Metro’s plans proceeded through a series of revisions, I followed along through the outreach materials that they produced. The process never felt very scientific, and that frustrated me, but I dreamed of a day where tools like the one I was building would make that so.

Thoughts on a Jarrett Walker Post

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

“Mount Rainier and the Port of Seattle from Magnolia Bridge” by SounderBruce is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“What if we planned public transit with the goal of freedom?” asks public transportation consultant Jarrett Walker in a blog post from this March. A little over five years ago, a presentation that he gave planted this question in my mind. Having a background in software, and unaware of anyone else who was thinking about this question¹, I started creating the tools that I would need to measure the freedom conferred by public transit systems. Within a year, I had sold my car and quit my job to focus full time on transit. I envisioned myself as establishing my own consultancy that would guide transit agencies through network redesigns using my software for generating measurements of transit network quality.

About BusGraphs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Matt Laquidara. Since 2016, I’ve been working on tools to evaluate transit networks on the basis of access: the ability of people to reach whatever destinations that they desire, wherever they’re starting, and whenever they want to be there.

My education background and professional experience is in computer science and software development; my knowledge of public transit comes from a mixture of independent study and lived experience. My paper Measuring Spontaneous Accessibility for Iterative Transit Planning, published in the Transportation Research Record, was selected best paper by the Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Committee and won the Fred Burggraf Award for excellence in research by a researcher under the age of 35. I’ve also previously written Seattle-specific transit articles for Seattle Transit Blog.

Glossary

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Certain terms used in these posts have meanings that are more constrained than their conventional usage. To avoid ambiguity, they are defined and explained here.

Access

Broadly, access is the ability of people to reach destinations. It is a combined property of some land area, its natural and built environment, and the systems operated in that environment, like public transit networks. In these posts, access is, specifically, the ability of individuals to reach whatever destinations that they desire, wherever they’re starting, and whenever they want to be there.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

BusGraphs

Using Arf for Route Planning Experimentation

Changing Some Bus Routes with Arf

An Assortment of Comparative Maps

A Sector Segment Map

Arf Takes Manhattan

Introducing Arf: Access, Raw & Fine

There's Already a Second Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel

Insurgent Transit

Frequency is Freedom. What is Span?

An Access Map Prototype

The Making of a Restructure: The End Result

The Making of a Restructure: Downtown Seattle

The Making of a Restructure: The "Commuter" Routes

A Love Letter to the Link

What's Wrong with Seattle's Streetcars?

The Routeshed

How Replaceable are Seattle's Transit Routes?

Accounting for Elevation

Nerd Christmas

A New Kind of Map for Transit Access

Route Productivity Redux

A First Look at Metro's September 2024 Service Change

What If No Buses Crossed the Fremont Bridge?

Reviving a Restructure

Mea Culpa: Previous In-Service Times are Inaccurate

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 6

Would Uniform Frequency Ruin Transit Commutes?

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 5

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 4

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 3

Overfull or Full of It? Part 1

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 2

Route Productivity, I Guess: Part 1

Looking Back at 2023

Seattle Could Have 24/7 Frequent Service; King County's Priorities Seem to Lie Elsewhere

What's the Frequency, Metro?

All Models are Wrong, But Is Modeling Access as a Function of Time Budget Useful?

Scaling Up: An Access Map of King County

The Aftermath

A Seattle Transit Restructure by the Numbers

How to Cut Service by 22% and Boost Access by 13%

Seattle's Transit Agencies Can Do Better

A Journey on the Seven Seats

Which Way to the Beach?

A Measurement Conundrum in Eastlake (and Beyond)

Exploring Exceptionality

Could the Most Transit-Accessible Place in Seattle Not Be Downtown?

Of Buses and Ballot Boxes

The Route 20 Problem

Thoughts on a Jarrett Walker Post

About BusGraphs

Glossary

Access

Subscribe

Receive Notification of New BusGraphs.com Posts