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| Re: Extending the SAS across 125th on the table (1626079) | |||
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Re: Extending the SAS across 125th on the table |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Mon Oct 9 22:38:57 2023, in response to Re: Extending the SAS across 125th on the table, posted by AlM on Mon Oct 9 18:20:17 2023. You fixate on improving the factors you are able to measure, rather than examining whether you are measuring the right things.Let me point out some rather depressing metrics. Anyone can find them on the NTD: https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/ntd-data I'm looking at the Metrics Spreadsheet for 2019. https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/2019-metrics It's got the yearly totals for costs, vehicle miles, hours, passenger counts, etc. The NYCT ID's for bus operations are: 20008 (NYCT) and 20188 (MTA Bus) bus modes are: CB, MB, RB for Commuter Bus, Motor Bus and Rapid Bus. The NYCT ID's for heavey rail operation are: 20008 (NYCT) and 20099 (SIRT). Not all agencies separate bus operation modes, so I've totaled all bus modes and all agencies for bus and rail operations. The Fare Recover Ratio (FRR) is 30% for bus operations and 70% for rail operations. You may recall from Economics 101, if marginal expenses exceed marginal revenue go out of business. 30% isn't that bad for public transit operations in the US and 70% is great in the US. It's around 1.0 for London, Tokyo, and Singapore. However, it's a misleading statistic for NYC because passenger trips per service-mile or service-hour are much higher than almost all other US cities. If you compare operating cost per unit of service you get a much different picture. NYC's operating cost per vehicle-revenue-mile is the highest in the country for bus operations by a lot. It does not get much better if the metric is cost per vehicle-revenue-hour. It's in the worst 10% of agencies in the country. The costs are about 30% higher than for Chicago and Philadelphia. NYC's rail operations are not that much better, compared to the 13 or 14 other heavy rail systems. Chicago and Philadelphia cost much less per vehicle-revenue-mile and vehicle-revenue-hour. The systems operate at comparable average speeds of 18 mph. Boston also comes out better but the reasons for the collapse of its rail system would not make it a good model to follow. The MTA's problem is it's operating expenses have been increasing faster than the cost of living and faster than its operating subsidies. The NTD database goes back to 1997, although the relevant tables have different names. The place to start examining operating costs is where they are disproportionately high for the service provided. That's buses. Service cuts are not the answer because NYC's buses have a higher load factor than any other system, save San Francisco. This means people will notice any service cuts. Also, buses don't scale up like trains so more service to reduce the load factor won't reduce per unit cost due to increased operating speeds. There's another factor that indicates that bus service levels have exceeded the ability of the road network to handle them. NYC's experience is probably unique. There are several intersections that are scheduled to handle more than 200 bus crossings per hour. It can't be done, given bus speed, bus length and intersection length. This is especially true because these also happen to be intersections with heavy pedestrian traffic. Almost all are located around either the Jamaica Center or Main St Flushing subway stops. 57th and Madison and Fifth get a couple of honorable mentions for the top 50. However, Flushing and Jamaica present the major problem. So, there's: 1. a transportation agency that has no incentive to bring operating costs in line with industry averages 2. one of its operating modes has disproportionately higher operating costs than other modes and the industry average 3. a different mode offers better service, scales with increased loads and does not reach 25% of the population. The obvious solution would be to have this different mode reach the remaining 25% of the population and reduce reliance on the mode that has higher per unit operating costs. |
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