One late bus can ruin your day, and your relationship with Halifax Transit. That long wait in the rain, the blown appointment, a bus that you missed because it went early—these are more powerful memories than the smooth trips, so it seems like the buses are always late. But are they really all that late, and if so, why? These are the questions PLANifax co-founder Byung Jun Kang had, and he slipped into his alter ego of Byung Jun the Planning Dude to get the answers.
This transformation is less super hero than “Super Boring Data Entry Experiment of Planning.” In this first part of his late bus opus, Kang logged all the Route 1 arrivals and departures at two stops in front of the Central Library for a whole day, 6am to 1am, and crunched the numbers to make some observations. An interesting finding is that given Halifax Transit’s definition of “on time” to include anywhere from three minutes before the scheduled departure to three minutes after, the buses were 93 percent on time. For that seven percent late, watch the video and find out how traffic congestion can especially screw up long routes.
Related Stories
Taras Grescoe isn’t ashamed to ride the bus
Transit services fall short on accessibility
Stranded by Halifax Transit
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2015.
The full lab report can be viewed here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1124qXhZ1zP9ovYZksoOdhnZEqy208BYs51xHGCK9Jkc/
You realize your data is flawed hugely. The bus stop you used in front of the library is not a schedule bus stop at all. You must look at a scheduled stop to have the proper data. According to the riders guide and look at time points that are listed. For the route 1 there are 5 time points listed for buses heading to the Bridge Terminal and 4 for those heading in reverse. Heading to the bridge you have Mumford, Oxford and Quinpool, Scotia Square( Barrington and Duke north bound), North and Brunswick and The Bridge Terminal. On the way to Mumford you have The Bridge Terminal, Scotia Square ( Barrington and Duke south bound), Oxford and Quinpool and Mumford terminal. The stop you stood at has no schedule for it. As long the bus shows up after Quinpool and Oxford time and before Scotia Square time its considered to be on time. You will see the one wait at those particular places if they are running early.
Edit: Although the video says the experiment was performed in Halifax Central Library, the actual one was performed in the Public Garden – which is one of the designated stops, not on the timetable for riders, but on the bus driver’s schedule.
congestion is a problem? really? better get building more public transit, and bicycle infrastructure to help relieve that.
Artic comments are quite accurate. Its tough scheduling on the #1 since the timing point at oxford/quinpool is really far away from the next timing point at scotia square.
The new transit system from trapeze will go a long way in fixing the gaps on the gotime, since it will be updated regularly during the day. The current giro system runs a schedule at the the start of the day; so the vehicles will be really close to gotime until probably mid-morning when traffic and breakdowns skew the actual vehicle arrival times.