Taking “Gertie” on a Tango Through Transit Planning Basics

An interesting question from Gabriola Island’s community bus group the other day seemed like a great leading off point to go over some transit planning basics.*  Let’s then go hand in hand with GERTIE and step our way through some elemental aspects in transit decision making.

But first, some background: Who is this “GERTIE” anyway?

GERTIE (Gabriola’s Environmentally Responsible Trans-Island Express) is the community bus service operating on Gabriola Island, a 20 minute ferry ride from Nanaimo, BC and part of BC’s Gulf Islands archipelago in the Salish Sea.  Started in June 2013, GERTIE is separate from the Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN) Transit System and is a community-operated service that has no provincial cost-sharing through BC Transit.**

Since it exists outside of the local and provincial funding sources used by many BC communities, GERTIE operates primarily through a group of volunteer drivers and one paid coordinator. Community donations and a grant from the RDN helped pay for the system’s collection of four vehicles (ranging from a nine passenger van to a mid-sized school bus), with two buses operating during peak ferry commuter times.  The service operates Monday to Saturday.

Gabriola Island’s Farmer’s Market: The place to be on a Saturday. (NanaimoInformation.com)

In terms of the community GERTIE serves, Gabriola has just over 4,000 year-round residents, growing to about double that number in the summer.  Other than its Village–home to its main shopping and services–population is spread out throughout the island on large lots and single family cabins and homes.  This lower density and the island’s road structure and topography create challenges as far as transit service goes, which is why I was recently contacted by Jim Ramsay from the GERTIE group.

GERTIE’s Choice: embrace route lollipops or do away with them?

In response to my post on the curse of lollipop route structures, Jim posed the following question:

Gabriola’s GERTIE com­mu­nity bus team is con­sid­er­ing its future and this arti­cle is cen­tral to that direc­tion. Some of the team favours elim­i­nat­ing all lol­lipops, while oth­ers feel “if we are going to con­tinue to serve single-access Gabri­ola neigh­bour­hoods […] then we have no choice.”

Is there a way to deter­mine what the impact on our rid­er­ship would be if we went to an express ser­vice only?

Jim also wrote to provide more background on his question, clarifying that the proposal from one of the members was to eliminate a number of “lollipop” deviations  off the main route and instead encourage residents to walk, bike or rideshare with neighbours to the main route.  To make it easier for all of us, I’ve marked the neighbourhoods on the GERTIE route map below. You can also view the complete Summer 2015 GERTIE Rider’s Guide for more info on the existing service.

GERTIE route map showing areas served off the main roads.

Assessing a Path for GERTIE: Transit Planning Basics and Trade Offs

Every community knows its own needs best and so ultimately the people of Gabriola are the ones who must decide on what the right mix of access and directness is for their system.  However, when considering this question, my suggestion is to keep the following transit planning basic (dance) steps in mind:

• Begin the Dance:  Data, Baby, Data – If your transit system is already serving areas, the most important thing to know before you do ANYTHING is where and when people are actually getting on and off the bus.  This means not only tracking passenger ridership by trip and day but also the number of on’s and off’s by segment of the route.  Not only will this help you make the right decision, but it will also crucially support your decision if you wind up taking service away from a low-performing area and people aren’t happy about it.

  How to Do a Basic On/Off Survey:

  • Divide the route into logical segments: usually between timing points but in this case, by neighbourhood.
  • Create a count sheet with space for each trip for drivers to record on’s and off’s for each segment plus the trip total. (In Excel is easiest as you can then use that same form for data entry).
  • Conduct the survey for at least two weeks.

  • How: In larger systems segment-level ridership is tracked by Automated Passenger Counters (APCs), sometimes complemented by real live “traffic checkers” surveying specific trips.  In a smaller system like Gabriola, a paper count form filled in by drivers is a common and usually not too onerous way to go.
• Conserve Your Resources: Relative Density – This is a true basic but I’m going to state it anyway just in case: transit follows land use and density.  I’ve expressed it as “relative density” here because we are examining a rural community but even in this case there will be some areas that offer more residential density than others. So in conjunction with actual ridership, prioritize serving areas with higher density.  Don’t feel like you need to be all things to all people: other areas can be added as your system and community evolves.
  • How: Again, larger systems (with more census areas!) are able to use GIS to document and monitor population density between neighbourhoods.  In a smaller system, at the very least look at zoning or cadastral maps (showing lots) from your Official Community Plan.
  • For instance, check out how Gabriola’s Whalebone and Hess Rd. areas compare when looking at a map showing lots from its Official Community Plan:

Looking at Gabriola’s relative density by lot sizes (Base Map: Islands Trust, Gabriola Official Community Plan, 2011)

• Step Together: Walk Limits – Another thing to keep in mind is that walk limits for transit are normally around 400 metres for more urban areas or around 800-1,200 metres for more rural areas or to access rapid transit.  This means that I wouldn’t normally recommend taking a bus off the main road if people are within this distance. (Depending on the type of service, community and a few other factors, I might bend this rule to serve a major development with a higher proportion of people with mobility challenges, like a senior’s building).
  • How: You can use Google Maps to get directions from the end of a loop to the main road as a quick and easy way to check walk distances.
    

    Wild Cherry walk distances to the main road/route.

    • For instance, much of the Wild Cherry/Buttercup loop is within 800 metres of the main North Road and even the very end of Wild Cherry is within 1,200 metres.  Therefore, this is one loop that depending on ridership and market you may want to reconsider routinely serving (unless to specifically serve someone with a disability by request).
    • You can also use these walk distances to identify places where building a sidewalk or trail cut-through from the end of the cul-de-sacs to the main road should be identified as a longer term priority in community plans.
• Know Who’s in Your Arms: Market –  As fun as it is to mess about with lines on a map, transit is about serving people and the key to doing that well is always being crystal clear on who it is you’re trying to serve and what their needs are.  In general, regular commuters want service as fast and direct as possible while shoppers and visitors will usually tolerate a little more meandering if they see it gets them closer to destinations.
  • How: As described in the original lollipops post, you can take slightly different approaches depending on who you are serving by time of day.  It seems like GERTIE is already doing this by offering separate service for its ferry commuter trips from its midday shopper trips.
• Follow a Pattern: Consistency – Consistency drives ridership.   So while there may be some latitude for taking slightly different approaches for different markets (depending on the size of the system and the type of service), overall you want to keep things as consistent as possible between trips and across service days.
  • How: In the case of GERTIE, whatever approach you take to the deviations/lollipops, try to do them as consistently as possible between trips.  For instance, if you are going to make a route segment by request, serve that area in that fashion on all midday trips rather than a mix of by-request, no service and scheduled service (which is what I see is happening somewhat in your existing schedule).
  • In the case of the Hess Rd. deviation, consistency also means looking at what gets missed if you skip a section of route (such as the section of South Rd. that is skipped when the bus goes via Hess Rd).  if there is a ridership on the skipped portion, then you may want to reconsider the deviation.
    

    What gets served (and what does not) when the bus deviates off its route by request to Hess Rd.

  • In terms of consistency, I’d also caution against making tweaks to your routes and schedules too often.  It is harder for customers to follow along and feel like they can depend on your service if the system never seems stable.  (I was once asked to do a post mortem on why a particular transit system failed.  From my research, I believe that one of the key contributing factors was how much its routes and schedules were repeatedly changed during its first year of service).
• Rhythm and Pacing Underpin it All: Scheduling – The final point when considering lollipops/deviations are how they might all hang together in a schedule.  Doing a lollipop near the start of a trip (when there are fewer passengers on board) is going to be more palatable than near the end of a trip (when there will likely be a higher proportion of passengers on board affected by the lollipop than the number of passengers boarding there).
  • How: If you are taking a “by-request” approach to lollipops, it also means that you need to schedule trips in a certain way so that the bus never runs ahead of schedule on the main part of your route (if there are no requests) but also has enough recovery time at the end (if there are).

Keeping the Cha Cha Going

Team Gabriola and others, hope this has been a helpful overview of some of the key things to think about when it comes to the transit planning process and answering your question.  Once you look at ridership, walk distances, market and other aspects, feel free to share as I’m sure that others would also be interested in seeing how this living case study evolves.

Got suggestions or other things to consider for our friends on Gabriola?  Feel free to comment below.

* I want to emphasize that I don’t intend to make this blog focussed on crowd-sourced transit planning rethinks: that would not be fair to other transit planners out there who need to make a living. However, since it operates via a community group on a shoestring budget–and therefore unlikely right now to hire a transit planning consultant of their own–I thought that GERTIE presented a great opportunity for a number of people to share in the service design process.

** I’m familiar with the Gabriola system because I’m a frequent visitor to the island and did its transit feasibility study back in 2010. For a number of reasons, the Gabriola group elected to move forward with transit on its own–with the RDN and public support noted above– rather than pursue a more formally supported transit system as described in the study.