How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

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flyingember
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How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by flyingember »

This is a hypothetical where you are part of a conceptual planning meeting to improve bus service to your part of town.

The idea is to take your neighborhood (part of town) and improve bus service to increase ridership, better serve neighborhood amenities and connect your neighborhood to the regional transit network.

Assume money is an issue and your city wants to increase the ability of people to shop, get to work and such in your area for the lowest cost possible. You can assume there's going to be pushback if you try and take away road capacity and you idea will fail so plan accordingly.

Post a map to the general area and describe what you would do. Is it done all at once or a staged rollout?

You can assume that some other plan has already connected service into your area but you should state this is part of your idea. And this needs to be a real plan. You could presume regional rail serves Lee's Summit or Blue Springs already since that's been announced. There's no planned rail service into JoCo so you couldn't use it in your plan.
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Eon Blue
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by Eon Blue »

This is easy for me - just implement most of the changes that KCATA has already proposed downtown. Most critically, run the Main Street Max straight down Grand from 3rd & Grand through Crown Center to Main Street.
JBmidtown
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by JBmidtown »

More bus shelters to make the system more inviting, more posted info at bus stops (system maps, route maps, arrival times and some kind of direction to useful apps, etc) and higher evening frequency on the most essential east/west routes. In my neighborhood the 39th and 47th would greatly benefit from these improvements and it wouldn't cost too much to implement...well, the higher frequency could be more expensive.

It would definitely be a popular improvement for both east and west KC
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smh
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by smh »

Eon Blue wrote:This is easy for me - just implement most of the changes that KCATA has already proposed downtown. Most critically, run the Main Street Max straight down Grand from 3rd & Grand through Crown Center to Main Street.
+1
chingon
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by chingon »

1. Eliminate the South Plaza jaunt of the Main MAX, running it straight down Main to BKS BLVD.

2. Run the 155 further west on 51st to Main before it turns north to the Plaza

3. Run the 57 on Oak the whole way

4. Reroute the 51 east on 58th then up Wornall into the Plaza, then over on 47th to Roanoke.
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by bobbyhawks »

The first thing I would do is to change this:
http://www.kcata.org/maps_schedules/regional_map/

It is the most annoying transit map I can imagine. Here is a picture of the metro area segmented by region, which is fine because it is very large, but you are there to get an idea of which lines run which direction. Select a region, and you get a huge list instead of a map. Then, you have to know what the line is called to click on it and see the actual representation of where it goes. The maps, once you get to them, are actually terrific, but there are 36 different ones to view for downtown alone. It is just very difficult to get an overall impression of the holes/strengths in the system. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by flyingember »

bobbyhawks wrote:The first thing I would do is to change this:
http://www.kcata.org/maps_schedules/regional_map/

It is the most annoying transit map I can imagine. Here is a picture of the metro area segmented by region, which is fine because it is very large, but you are there to get an idea of which lines run which direction. Select a region, and you get a huge list instead of a map. Then, you have to know what the line is called to click on it and see the actual representation of where it goes. The maps, once you get to them, are actually terrific, but there are 36 different ones to view for downtown alone. It is just very difficult to get an overall impression of the holes/strengths in the system. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
No, their maps are all horrible.
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by bobbyhawks »

flyingember wrote:
bobbyhawks wrote:The first thing I would do is to change this:
http://www.kcata.org/maps_schedules/regional_map/

It is the most annoying transit map I can imagine. Here is a picture of the metro area segmented by region, which is fine because it is very large, but you are there to get an idea of which lines run which direction. Select a region, and you get a huge list instead of a map. Then, you have to know what the line is called to click on it and see the actual representation of where it goes. The maps, once you get to them, are actually terrific, but there are 36 different ones to view for downtown alone. It is just very difficult to get an overall impression of the holes/strengths in the system. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
No, their maps are all horrible.
I guess I only really looked at one. Was trying to give them some credit. #-o
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by DaveKCMO »

- reducing the number of stops. many routes have TWO stops in one block. this makes all runs faster -- and thus, more efficient -- leading to the potential to add service, or at least stop spending the reserves (something that KCATA has decided to do all on their own).

- eliminate route deviations and turns. buses should run on arterials when at all possible, to maximize speed and connectivity with jobs. specific to my hood is the MAX jog and pretty much ever local route because they ALL do this.

- stop wasting money serving the fringes at the expense of the denser urban core. yes, that means you might have to cut some northland service and neighborhood circulators. low density gets hourly lifeline service, use the savings to expand MAX routes to 10-minute headways all-day, 7 days per week.

- as others said, implement the downtown CSA and add a public restroom to the new east village transit center. ridiculous that it is being designed without such a basic need (operators will get a restroom).

- off-board ticketing for all MAX lines, at minimum in high volume spots like 11th/12th and 3rd/grand.
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by JBmidtown »

DaveKCMO wrote:- reducing the number of stops. many routes have TWO stops in one block. this makes all runs faster -- and thus, more efficient -- leading to the potential to add service, or at least stop spending the reserves (something that KCATA has decided to do all on their own).

- eliminate route deviations and turns. buses should run on arterials when at all possible, to maximize speed and connectivity with jobs. specific to my hood is the MAX jog and pretty much ever local route because they ALL do this.

- stop wasting money serving the fringes at the expense of the denser urban core. yes, that means you might have to cut some northland service and neighborhood circulators. low density gets hourly lifeline service, use the savings to expand MAX routes to 10-minute headways all-day, 7 days per week.

- as others said, implement the downtown CSA and add a public restroom to the new east village transit center. ridiculous that it is being designed without such a basic need (operators will get a restroom).

- off-board ticketing for all MAX lines, at minimum in high volume spots like 11th/12th and 3rd/grand.
Yes to all of this
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by flyingember »

I live one block off the only 7 day local northland line, 142.

I second Dave's point on too many stops. Just north of me there's two stops that are two blocks apart. Realistically the line does not need both of these stops. The city even installed sidewalks on one side of the street and bike lanes giving better access to both the stops. (not that it's safe to use those bike lanes)

let's assume there's 5000 stops citywide. Let's say we reduced that by 1/3, or cut 1650 stops.
Let's say purchasing, transport and installation of one blue kcata sign is $250 (I bet it's higher)
So for just this one change we can save $400,000 on just pole signs the next replacement.

That $400,000 can be used to install trash cans at major stops. There's so many that are just trashy and there's no alternative to carrying your trash onto the bus. If everyone did that the trash would always be full and unusable, which is why there's cans at stops to begin with.

And the general look of the stop will drive away riders. If you own a car why would you want to stand at a stop surrounded by trash?
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by JBmidtown »

flyingember wrote: And the general look of the stop will drive away riders. If you own a car why would you want to stand at a stop surrounded by trash?
or without a shelter against the elements? I will never stop making this point.
flyingember
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Re: How would you design improved bus service in your neighborhood?

Post by flyingember »

I just found the greatest example of excessive bus stops on N. Oak

There's one the south side of 55th and then the next one is at 5545 N. Oak

That's less than a block between them.

I would pull both those stops and I would put in a small bus center at N. Oak and NE Englewood to better connect 136 and 142 together.

The city owns the hilly lot right on the SW corner so with some good engineering it could be a small bus turn-in spot with room for a couple busses. Add a special light to the cycle to let the busses out.
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