BusTalk

[timecruncher]

Louisville is joining the legion of transit agencies who have spent every penny in the coffers trying to maintain service in an era of skyrocketing operating costs.

Our cuts don't include a fare increase component at this time, and most of the cuts are simply needed to bring the service in line with ridership at the bus stops.

At the same time, many of our drivers continue to treat passengers rudely, skip parts of routes, run late/early with impudence and generally act as if they don't care if there are butts in seats or not. At any rate, here is a link to the Rider Alert and the information it contains:

http://www.ridetarc.org/alerts.asp?ArticleID=386

If anyone here knows a little about TARC and wants to see what the revised schedules look like, I have them in Excel format and can email to you.

timecruncher
Schedulers cut off your bus?

[RailBus63]

I’ve noticed that transit agencies in general have woken up very quickly and realized that the old tried-and-true tactic of proposing drastic service cuts (designed to promise maximum pain and scare the bejeesus out of riders and convince politicians to find the bucks to avoid them) no longer fly in today’s economy. The TARC cuts seem to be realistic and designed to preserve as much service as possible while hurting the fewest customers. Done right, maybe transit professionals can finally do away with certain grossly underperforming services that have been kept alive to pacify some politicians.

[timecruncher]

That's because I am pretty much of the architect of the service cuts. Originally it was to be a collaboration (as it should be) of our Director of Planning, our planner and myself. Due to unforseen circumstances, it ended up being the planner and me doing the work.

He gave me the numbers, and we worked together on the changes that finally came out of those numbers. I have the advantage of knowing our system inside and out, while he has a good handle on the numbers, but hasn't lived in the city but a couple of years.

I might add that he and I are also both regular riders of our transit system. It makes a difference when you actually use the service and hear from both the passengers and our operators about issues pertinent to each route.

The express routes being axed all run ONE morning and afternoon trip only, except for 38X which has two morning and two afternoon trips, but which is duplicated by a local route (6) that is just as fast. 62 is a weak crosstown route, and I am loathe to cut it, but we needed those hours and would have had to cut it in June anyway. 58 would have worked just as well, but it serves major senior-citizen housing, shopping centers and a significant medical center area. It provides access to necessary destinations for those who have no alternate transportation. Half of route 62's riders are students attending a major parochial school where the day the students turn 16 mommies and daddies buy them a car to drive and then gripe about the cost of insurance, fuel, etc. If need be, we can establish a school tripper to handle them at far less cost.

The rest of the routes losing a trip here and there are mostly peak-hour lines where ridership has dropped along with gasoline prices. We have to face the fact that commuters do not consider transit as a viable alternative if service operates two or three times in each peak, and if origin to destination times are no better. Louisville is a big, congested metropolitan area, but traffic is not yet bad enough to make driving inconvenient.

Finally, the last consideration was the cost of running one-trip rush hour runs. We have very few part-time drivers and most of the rush hour trippers are run at overtime with full-timers. Our dispatch office does a poor job of getting those runs out and our extra board is both poorly-trained and poorly-equipped to get those runs out efficiently and promptly. Getting rid of one-trip routes helps to alleviate the obvious runcutting issues and focuses our services along the heavier trunk routes that have always been the backbone of our ridership.

I don't like to cut service, but I am pleased with the results of our work on this. Getting my armour shined up and lubricated for the upcoming public hearings, though!

timecruncher

I don't point my finger at those who don't use transit, either. If I drive to work, it takes from 15-20 minutes max. If I ride transit, it takes 45-60 minutes with one change or a 5-block walk downtown. Time-wise, it makes sense to drive, but I prefer not to be "part of the problem." Plus, it is kinda nice to have to fill up the Sienna only every other week, and then maybe only need 8 gallons of my favorite petrol!

[RailBus63]

I just heard on the local news that Centro is announcing cuts to close a $6 million budget gap. Looks like most of the poor-performing routes that survived the last round of cutbacks earlier this year are still performing poorly.