Speeding up buses seen as key to transit rebound
TransLink staff believe that changing the region’s roads to speed up buses could make transit a more attractive option to people trying to get around during and after the pandemic.
That is why, pending approval from the Mayors’ Council, transit authority staff will develop a “rapid response plan for quickwin bus priority” on the 20 worst corridors for bus delays. Those corridors, which were identified in a 2019 report, span the region, but the top five run through Surrey, Delta, Richmond and Vancouver.
The focus is on actions that can be taken quickly, such as removing or consolidating bus stops to improve performance and free up sidewalk space, extending curbs or constructing boarding islands to reduce the need for buses to enter and exit traffic and increase sidewalk space, and making regulatory changes and lane designations that prioritize buses or separate them from other traffic.
“We need to give transit its best chance in order for our region to successfully rebuild and recover,” system planning director Sarah Ross said in a council report.
The idea is that the changes will support ridership recovery, improve operating efficiency, and support physical distancing among passengers by reducing crowding.
“If trips shift from transit to driving as the economy restarts, this could trigger a vicious cycle of slowing buses, which become a less-competitive travel option and encouraging further driving,” Ross wrote.
The report says TransLink will make $547,000 in unallocated funding available through its bus speed and reliability municipal funding program to implement bus priority measures this year.
Anthony Perl, a professor of political science and urban studies at Simon Fraser University, said small measures such as quicker boarding and fewer stops are steps in the right direction, but he doesn’t want to see the efforts to improve bus service end there.
Although it can often be a politically unpopular move, as it was recently on 41st Avenue in Vancouver, Perl said removing street parking in favour of bus lanes would make a more dramatic difference.
“You can’t really get to the optimum speed and productivity of bus operations without taking away street parking. Those other things are baby steps in the right direction, but I think that the need for change to deal with the effects of this pandemic in cities are beyond the baby steps stage,” Perl said. “If this is the first step, I just want to make sure it isn’t the last step that’s taken for this.”
The key will be to make changes quickly and show the public, in detail, the time and money savings that will result.
“The more we open up, and the more we get back to some kind of new normal, it’s always harder to catch up,” Perl said. “Once those parking spots are full again and once those stores are open again,
While it can be a politically unpopular move, says one expert, removing street parking in favour of bus lanes, as the city did recently on 41st Avenue, can make a dramatic difference toward improving service.
you’re going to be playing catchup, and it will take longer and be harder to do these things that are really essential to keeping transit going effectively.”
David Cooper, a Vancouver-based transit planning consultant and former TransLink planner, said that it will be up to municipalities to champion these kinds of changes, because they ultimately have control over the road space.
“At the end of the day, TransLink is really stuck in a trap where they won’t be able to add more service because of financial means, and then the other piece of it is that the only way you can speed up service or even improve frequency is going to be through reliability, but they 100 per cent have to rely on municipalities to do that,” Cooper said.
Cooper said that there is a smaller window than one might think
to put any priority measures to work. He said many people will be making commuting choices over the next couple of months and councils will need to consider the information and make decisions by the end of July.
But, the quick road changes that have been made for walking and cycling during the pandemic show it can be done.