Has it ever happened to you that when you were waiting for the bus, you could see the next stop? Maybe you thought you could walk to it in less than 2 minutes, all while wondering what' its purpose is. Well, you just found one of the main causes of late buses; stop spacing. But why are they that close to one another?
Traditionally, we wanted to put stops as close as possible to households. That used to mean every block or so (see picture below). But contemporarily, our view on this topic has changed, now leaning towards spaced stations, with more amenities than regular poles. This new way of doing things has enabled us to not serve a house twice, which speeds up the bus as a whole.
Catchment area of stops with the old and new concepts
A city in Quebec that’s having a hard time spacing it’s stops is the city of Saguenay. On its transit spine; the 175, some stops can be as close as 150 meters from one to the other, or a 2 minute walk. As to better put this into perspective, I created a map based on some sections of the 175 through Chicoutimi (Picture below), that better presents stop spacing on its territory.
Stop spacing on the 175 through Chicoutimi
A regular person can walk up to 400 meters in 5 minutes, and 5 minutes is not a lot. If we look at the map pictured above, most stope are within 200 meters from one to the other, which sets the walking time during stops at about 2:30 minutes. The time it takes a bus to stop, open it’s doors, close them, and leave, usually takes around 50 seconds. In the case of Saguenay, 3 minutes walking is about 2 minutes on the bus if we account for dwell times. This is 40 second on the bus for every minute walked, it’s a bad ratio for transit!
If we took out half the stops, walking times between them would still not exceed 5 minutes, which again, is not a long time. Furthermore, the bus, taking about 50 second per stop, saves a lot of time if we remove only a few stops. If we look at the image below, time savings can be up to 4 minutes, for 5 stations removed, and that, only in downtown Chicoutimi!
My changes made to the 175 through downtown to speed up travel times
This concept, Ottawa understood it well. In downtown Ottawa, stops are at an average distance of 240 meters, compared to the 170 of Chicoutimi. Atop that, in a 300m radius around stops on the line in Saguenay and Ottawa, the lather has a lot more population. According to Gemini and StatsCan 2021, there would be around 4000 citizens in downtown Chicoutimi, for about 10 stops, on the same length of road, in Ottawa, there are 6 stops to desserve 24 000 citizens. So, if we follow this logic, we need more stops for less people !?
Downtowns of Chicoutimi and Ottawa compared
According to me, a major step towards making transit faster in Saguenay would be to look back at current stops, and see what their usage is, or how close they are to another one, . Fortunately for them, my next chronicle will be about the consequences of bad stop spacing. If you wish to see this next chronicle, I invite you to subscribe by entering your e-mail address below so you can receive a notification when the next chronicle comes out. In the meantime, I encourage you to look around next time you take the bus; can you see the next stop from where you’re standing?