On-time bus numbers are up since initial stop eliminations

Officials stress need for long-term trends

It’s early, but Port Authority seems to be getting the results it wanted from its bus stop consolidation program.

The transit agency began a process last fall to review its 98 routes and more than 7,000 stops with a goal of eliminating unsafe or redundant stops to improve its ontime performance. After one month, it is getting good results on the first two routes it reviewed: the 16 Brighton, which runs from Downtown through the North Side, and the 51 Carrick, which runs from Downtown through the South Side to Carrick.

The changes began in late November, and for the first full month in December both routes showed substantial improvements.

Phillip St. Pierre, the agency’s director of service planning and scheduling, told an authority committee last week that the on-time performance for the 16 Brighton increased from 70% to 78%. For the 51 Carrick, it rose from 63% to 74%. He stressed that the numbers are an “initial snapshot” and trends will be watched over the next few years.

The expectation is for better ontime performance to lead to increased ridership, and the early results are leaning that way, too. Overall, ridership on the 16 Brighton was down 3.3% compared with the previous December but was down 4% for the entire year. The 51 Carrick was up .77% over the previous December and down 1% for the year.

Port Authority cut 33 of the 127 stops on the 16 Brighton route and 39 of 180 stops on the 51 Carrick.

The agency’s chief development officer, David Huffaker, said the early results are encouraging, but he pumped the brakes on how much they mean.

“It’s difficult to pat yourself on the back for one month of results,” he said. “We need to work on the longer-term trends.”

The bus stop review began after the agency saw on-time performance drop from 66.7% to 65.7% during CEO Katharine Eagan Kelleman’s first year with the agency in 2018. Ms. Kelleman had set a goal of improving to 73% of buses arriving on time, which the agency defines as arriving one

minute or less early or fewer than five minutes late.

Port Authority’s on-time performance lags behind all five of its peers — transit systems in Baltimore, Buffalo, N.Y.; Minneapolis, Portland, Ore.; and Seattle — that use the same on-time standard, especially four that reported 80% of their buses were on time.

Port Authority announced last week that it had completed another pair of route reviews but will take a break and review the process it has been following to analyze which stops should be eliminated. Some riders and advocacy groups have criticized the authority for deciding which stops to eliminate, then notifying the public to get reactions rather than asking riders in advance which stops should be eliminated.

Ms. Kelleman has said her experience in other cities shows riders don’t attend meetings to talk about potential stop eliminations but do respond if they find out their stop may be eliminated.