The transit death spiral, or Spiral of doom, as some urbanists call it, is a phenomenon that happens when transit systems reduce the frequency on their routes, which makes it, so users of those routes use them less, therefore making the system reduce the frequency even more. Sometimes, those closures can go as far as taking out fixed transit for an on demand only system.
This is often the consequence of 2 main factors; the users and the fleet. How can the users reduce the frequency of a transit line, you might ask. Well, let’s say there is a line with about 5 passengers per run, which runs every 15 minutes, this is not financially viable for the transit company, so they’ll reduce it to every 30 minutes, hoping there will be 10 passengers per run, but what usually happens is that people will just use it less.
Those commuters will not use it less because they don’t like transit anymore, only because they relied on that bus, and now they don’t have that option unless they wait another 15 mins at their destination. That is not a big deal of it’s own, but if this person had a transfer to do, which is no longer doable because of this, they might just not take the bus.
Now, out of those 5 people we thought would be 10 per run, it actually became 3 per run, so in other words, the 20 people per hour became 6. This is a 60% drop in hourly ridership! The transit company, seeing this, might just decide to remove that line altogether as it is no longer fiscally viable.
Let’s say this line was a trunk of the transit system in your city, now, the whole system is fragmented. A journey that took you 20 minutes, now takes 40, compared to a 10 minute car ride. So you will leave the bus altogether to get a car. The company seeing that this second line is no longer profitable, will then close it too.
Though the main cause of it, some other causes can be the genesis of the death spiral, some examples are congestion, or fleet issues.
By congestion, I mean congestion so bad, it makes you miss connections, or takes thrice as much time as the car. This can make someone choose a car instead.
For the fleet issues, let’s say your transit system (uh um… OC Transpo) doesn’t have the right labor force to repair it’s vehicles, it will eventually have to skips some trips, if that is your local trip that got cancelled, and you therefore are left busless, you might start walking instead, now that your bus is unreliable, from then on, the company will start cancelling even more trips and it will keep on getting worse.
This reduction in service along the whole system, can eventually deem transit too financially unviable for the city. They could then decide to scrap buses altogether, and switch to on demand transit.
A way to mitigate this for the wellbeing of others is to take the bus even if you don’t need to. That’s what I sometimes do. Just get on, ride 1 or 2 stops, and get off. That way, the company will think there is demand therefore keeping the system running, until real demand appears again. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up enjoying it and using it daily!