MTA Showed Me Their Bus Route Rankings and This is What I Learned
Just six months after unveiling a new bus system for Baltimore, the Maryland Transit Administration has already proposed cutting back parts of its heavily marketed high-frequency network as part of its winter service adjustments.
High-frequency service cuts after only six months? Some sources, such as the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, say service would have been cut by as much as two percent.
I was curious how MTA made these decisions and what factors determine if a bus route is a success. Lower cost? Higher passenger volume? Efficiency? On-time performance?
According to the proposed service changes, one way MTA decides on a route’s success is via a route-ranking system it uses to evaluate its bus routes several times a year.
The system, which uses sampled data, evaluates route performance in several categories including number of riders per trip (one-way); number of riders transported per revenue-hour, passenger load factor, and number of riders transported per revenue-mile.
On-time performance, incidentally, does not factor into a route’s ranking.
The rankings are not typically made public, so I filed a Public Information Act request in November asking for 2017 summer and fall (weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays) rankings.
I also obtained from MTA a separate document on performance data by bus route, which provides daily averages on the number of passengers transported per route, the number transported per trip, the daily cost to run each route and the cost per passenger, among other information.
I received this data from MTA a few weeks ago and here is what I found out.
“Heavy-Hauler” Routes Rank High
Not surprisingly, some of the CityLink high-frequency routes were among the system’s top ranked. CityLink Red earned a number-one total rank with a daily average of 58 riders per trip, and 57 riders transported per weekday revenue hour.
Red was followed by the CityLink Gold, with a daily average of 52 riders per trip, and LocalLink 29, with 57 passengers per trip.
The CityLink Orange ranked fifth overall, but ranked number one in the system for riders per trip at 59. LocalLink 85 ranked seventh and averaged 41 passengers per trip.
For some perspective on how many passengers a bus can carry, a 40-foot-bus holds approximately 50 with a standing load. The 60-foot articulated (“bendy”) bus holds about 75.
High-Ranked Routes Get Cut Too
Several LocalLink routes ranked highly.
LocalLink 22, part of MTA’s Frequent Transit Network, ranked fourth, averaging 53 passengers per trip.
The Frequent Transit Network includes all CityLink routes and the LocalLink 22, 26, 30, 54, 80, and 85, which offer high-frequency service during morning and evening peak hours and midday.
LocalLink 54 ranked fifth and averaged 50 passengers per trip.
LocalLink 26 ranked fifteenth and averaged 40 passengers per trip.
LocalLink 30 ranked 23rd and averaged 38 passengers per trip.
But solid rankings don’t necessarily mean a route’s service won’t be reduced. Both the 26 and 30 were proposed for significant service reductions in Winter of 2018. For both routes, mid-day service (from about 9 a.m. — 4 p.m.) could be reduced from every 15 minutes to every half hour.
To put it another way, riders can currently count on about four LocalLink #26 and #30 buses per hour. If service is cut, they’ll get only two.
Additionally, for the LocalLink 26 evening service would be reduced from every 20 minutes to every 30.
LocalLink 28, which ranked seventeenth, is also slated for midday service cuts, from service every 20 minutes to service every half hour, and LocalLink 54, which ranked sixth, was proposed for evening service reductions.
LocalLink Operating Costs Vary — Considerably
Some LocalLink routes are more cost effective to run than others.
The LocalLink 83, which ranked tenth, carries an average of 2,895 passengers per weekday, and costs MTA about $1.57 per weekday passenger trip.
The LocalLink 65, however, which ranked 54th — and averages just 1,707 daily weekday passengers— costs the agency $4.07 per weekday passenger trip.
The 65 offers high-frequency service (five buses per hour) during a.m. and p.m. peak and is the only route that makes a direct connection to Amazon, a major local employer.
According to the performance data, a majority of LocalLinks cost between $2– 5 per weekday passenger trip, but some routes cost more.
These include LocalLink 33 (ranked 49th), which costs $5.55 per weekday passenger trip; LocalLink 34,(ranked 62nd), at $5.61, while the LocalLink 75 (ranked 59th) costs $5.75 per trip.
The most expensive LocalLink to operate is the LocalLink 92, or The Pikesville Circulator.
It operates nine revenue hours per weekday at a cost of $12.12 per trip, and six hours on Sundays (no Saturday service) with an average cost per passenger trip of $18.09.
Express Buses Are Expensive to Run
The most costly routes to operate, however, are the underutilized ExpressLinks.
Part of the proposed winter service changes include cutting three costly “suburban-to-suburban” express routes, which MTA ranked 64th, 65th, and 67th respectively.
#102 — White Marsh to Towson
#106 — Owings Mills Metro to Towson
#107 — Old Court Metro to BWI Airport
The 102 operates for 29 revenue hours per day and carries an average of 220 riders daily, at a cost of $15 per passenger trip.
The 107, which had the lowest efficiency rank and highest cost per passenger of all MTA routes, transported an average of 35 passengers per day during 8 revenue hours, at a cost to MTA of $31.00 per passenger trip.
To understand how costly it is for MTA to run and subsidize underutilized ExpressLink service, it helps to know what ExpressLink riders actually pay. An ExpressLink bus pass costs only $90 per month and the one-way express up-charge is only an extra 50 cents.
Why the High-Frequency Cuts?
After reviewing the route rankings and cost per passenger trip data, I better understand why some routes are being reduced or cancelled.
But the cuts to the high-frequency routes still don’t make sense to me — especially not the LocalLink 26 and LocalLink 30.
Cutting mid-day high-frequency service would take both the 26 and 30 out of the Frequent Transit Network and require the MTA to recalculate its much promoted access to frequent transit stats.
“Under BaltimoreLink, about 130,000 more people have access to frequent transit within a quarter mile of where they live compared to the old bus system,” MTA posted several times on social media this fall.
The MTA said these service cuts to the 26 and 30 are necessary to match ridership patterns on the routes, but I haven’t seen any data that shows lower ridership on the LocalLink 26 or 30 during mid-day.
The agency is currently evaluating the proposed service changes in light of rider feedback and will make its final decisions within the next few weeks.
