The cost of congestion in bus operations
Quantifying the Impact of Traffic Congestion
We need to be able to quantify the impact of traffic congestion on our busing operations. While as operators we can influence some aspects of modal shift - like ticket pricing, regular schedules, and good clean equipment - the biggest needle-movers are those that push people from their cars to the bus or other mass transit. These include measures that result in a mindset where it doesn’t make sense to even consider the car as a first option – like driving in Manhattan or Central London.
Making ride times quicker and more convenient than equivalent car journeys can be achieved via a variety of measures. Unfortunately, they are not typically within the control of operators.
The establishment of bus priorities (e.g. bus-only corridors, queue jumps and traffic signal technologies), improved enforcement of traffic rules (policing of bus priorities, ticketing parking offenders) and replacing spaces used to support car infrastructure for bus infrastructure (For example, creating bus lanes out of long car parking lanes) are all measures that require the assistance of local authorities and urban planning folk.
Every Operator Needs to Know the Cost of Congestion
One important task bus operators should undertake is an assessment of the cost of congestion in their system and on their operations. And I’m not talking about the ‘delay’ or ‘overtime’ dollars added to payroll for drivers booking off late.
Every General Manager should know the monetary cost of congestion on their operations and specifically what the elimination of that can translate into for them, their local authorities, and their communities.
Every Regional Manager should know this for their region and every CEO/Executive should know this for their entire company. The numbers can be staggering.
Quantifying the Congestion
In this article, we’ll explore some ways of quantifying the congestion. We’ll look at the costs of congestion extrapolated into annual amounts, and we’ll look at how solutioning it in the form of bus priorities can help local authorities win in servicing their jurisdictions.
Armed with these bits of data, bus operators can be better equipped to engagement with local stakeholders, authorities and the travelling public and help move the case for action on bus priority in their areas.
Assumptions:
I’ll take a fictitious example, but I'd encourage you to build out an equivalent model to get some high-level numbers for congestion in your own system.
Here are some assumptions:
I have 1 busy cross-city route. It operates every 10 minutes from 6am to 8pm.
It takes 55 minutes one-way, and I have 10 minutes layover at each end.
A decent set of bus priorities would reduce journey time by 10 minutes to 45mins.
Let’s look at what that can save on our operations:
A 10 minute improvement in journey time in this example saves:
2 buses, or 2 PVR
Take an annual maintenance cost per PVR and remove the 2 buses saved and you’re likely into 5 digits of savings.
28 operational hours (or approx. 3 driver shifts) per day.
Bump that up to 5 or 6 days a week, and you’re hitting 140-160 hours a week (or 4-5 driver bid/rota lines).
How about that times 52 weeks for the year and you’re over 7,000 hours. If you’re at $15 an hour, then you’re well into six digit savings annually - for only one route!
The amounts are astonishing when worked out. The benefit of faster journey times and more efficient use of road space should help make car use even less attractive, which should help reduce further the congestion that exists outside the bus priorities as car users reconsider.
Beyond Savings
It’s not only the operational savings that need to be considered as the goal. There are other uses for the saved resource, and these should form the basis of why there are other benefits to local authorities and city planners for the communities they serve, in addition to the bus operators:
Increase Frequency:
If the route is already strong, more frequent service and less waiting for passengers may encourage further organic growth. In this case, buses could operate up to every 7-8 minutes approximately. The better a bus priority system is, the more unattractive the car becomes. This has positive safety and health implications for the built environment.
Service Expansion:
The 10 minutes saved could instead be used to extend the reach of the route by 10 minutes beyond its current start or end point. Is there a nearby untapped housing development, village, hospital, store that could be the source of organic growth? The case for priorities to make transit accessible to more can be a compelling one to make and politically positive for those decision makers.
Cost Reduction and Fare Revision:
There are significant savings on hours and vehicles that could be passed on in the form of revised fares or new ticket products. As mentioned earlier, this can be one of the few tools within the bus operator’s control as a ‘pull-factor’ to help with the modal shift away from the car. It can show the operator's commitment as a partner with the local authority in the project towards jointly executed planning for sustainable travel.
Sandbox or New Route Experimentation:
An operator in good financial shape may take the hours and buses saved and deploy them on experimental routes, shuttles, etc. You may consider this as the research and development dollars reallocated from savings rather new expenditure. It may help identify other opportunities for new and organic growth.
Wrapping Up:
The example provided was for 1 route with a 10 minute frequency, which yielded savings in the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Most large transit systems contain may routes of similar characteristics and could benefit from any initiatives that could shorten journey times by 10 minutes.
They need to know internally what the value of that is on the tip of their tongue and continuously remind themselves of it.
They need to use every opportunity to promote the benefits to the authorities, push internally to secure lobbying resource, and to demonstrate in community engagement exercises how, with some willpower and effort, we can all help improve the towns and cities we live in.