Induced demand and transit

Jarrett, as he usually does, has another interesting post up on Human Transit on the subject of whether or not rail attracts more riders than bus.  He points to some research done by a Munich transit planner (who subsequently joins the conversation in the comments) suggesting that this is the case, comparing various mid-sized (under 500,000) European cities with trams and without, noting that the cities considered in the study who have trams generally have higher ridership than those without.

Jarrett asked the fundamental chicken-and-egg question:  Was the construction of streetcars (in most cases, lines running in an exclusive right-of-way, functionally more similar to the MAX Yellow Line than Portland Streetcar) a driver of demand, or a response to it?  In other words, "did the trams cause the ridership, or did the ridership cause the tram?"

The chicken...

This is a good question.  A big technical advantage of rail over bus is vastly greater passenger capacity--and many successful rail lines have been built in bus corridors that got too crowded.  A common argument against rail projects (or against capital-intensive busways) in corridors that aren't already crushloaded to the gills at three minute headways, is "the existing demand doesn't justify the investment".   One commentor, "Danny", asserted that:

All successful high speed rail systems were capacity expansions for crowded low speed rail systems. All failing systems were constructed under the impression that speed causes ridership. 

While I respectfully disagree with his use of the universal quantifier "all"; and I  disagree with the first half of his statement completely (I can think of many counter-examples), the second half of the sentence has a lot of truth:  Many "failing" systems (by which I assume he means systems with usage levels far less than predicted) were constructed based on ridership increases which didn't come too pass.  If you build a rapid transit line in place of a local bus line and cancel (or reduce in frequency) the latter, you already have established a reasonable floor for the utilization of the rapid transit line--the bulk of the bus passengers will switch.  OTOH, if you are anticipating additional ridership that isn't there... there's a far greater chance you will be wrong.

...or the egg?

But, there's also a good chance you'll be right.  The Munich transit planner who produced the above-referenced paper surfaced in the comments, and had this to say. 

When you have cities of a similar size and density usually you should expect a similar ridership of public transit. But obviously, in average, it is not like that. So I sent Jarrett the data as one indicator for this "tram bonus", as we call it, that is able to get people out of their cars, like a bus system would never be able to do it.

Even the successful BRT systems in different cities do usually just channel a demand that already exist, a high demand of captive riders. Who ever has a car in those cities still uses it. 

We believe in the ability of a tram system to attract more people, people who would never set a foot into a bus, and we invest a lot of money in that. And: no matter if we are right or wrong with this "belief", it does work indeed. We see the numbers, we see the ticket sales and it makes sense, even from the economic perspective. It does not make sense for any bus line, but you can expect to increase ridership in a dimension of 50% to 100% on a line, compared to the bus service. If that makes sense for you, then do it.

Doug Allen, a local transit advocate (who was involved in the planning for the initial MAX line, and still works for TriMet--his words, obviously, aren't necessarily the opinions of his employer) added his two cents:

I would agree with "TransitPlannerMunich" that experience with the conversion of a bus route to tram, in a city with a mature system of bus and rail, can provide insight into whether passengers prefer rail over bus.

The implementation of the "Yellow" light rail line in Portland Oregon also showed that a rail line that is shorter and less frequent than the bus service that it replaced can attract higher ridership, no matter how irrational this may seem.

Doug refers to the now-gone 5/Interstate, which ran from Hayden Island along Interstate Avenue to downtown Portland.  The Yellow Line doesn't presently serve the island, and runs at 15 minute headways, so in at least two respects, it's inferior to the bus service it replaced.

Neither Doug or "TransitPlannerMunich" offered any explanation why they observe a presence for rail; formal research on the "tram bonus" is inconclusive.  And other commenters wondered whether or not reconfigurations of bus service (converting parallel downtown routes into feeder routes) might boost rail ridership without boosting overall commute share.  Many properties which riders attribute to bus and rail, are often properties of the local implementation thereof--if, for example a transit agency operates 40' diesel busses through rough neighborhoods with no capital improvements on the bus routes, alongside modern light rail that sticks to the nicer parts of town--don't be surprised if local residents characterize the bus as dirty, noisy, slow, unreliable, and full of unsavory characters.  Bus can be clean and fast, and rail can be slow and uncomfortable; there is much overlap in the service parameters for both.   On the other hand, if there is a demonstrated community preference for one mode over the other--even if entirely irrational--that's something that ought to be factored into planning.

Induced demand

Which leads us to the subject of induced demand-- the "Field of Dreams" problem. ("If you build it, they will come").  If the supply of a given resource is increased, then more of it is often consumed.  This is especially true when the existing supply is insufficient (or barely sufficient) to meet the existing demand; there's often lots of pent-up demand that is more than happy to consume the new supply.  A related phenomenon is value-induced demand; if you increase the value (quality) of a resource, without increasing the cost, demand will also rise.  Both phenomena are in the realm of Economics 101.

Induced demand is frequently invoked in arguments concerning construction or expansion of freeways, where congestion relief is cited as a justification for the bulldozer and the mixer.  Highway opponents frequently point out that when freeway capacity is added, it frequently fills up with additional traffic, causing a failure to deliver on the expected congestion relief.  (Freeways suffer from a fundamental scalibility problem as well--additional traffic, even if below capacity, increases the chance of a wreck, stall, or other incident which severely impacts service.) 

But induced demand works for transit as well.  Transit opponents frequently point out the same thing about transit projects sold on the basis of congestion relief--even if the transit service attracts motorists out of their cars, other motorists often take their place.  But the principle applies:  When transit service improves, either in capacity or in quality, more people will elect to use it.  The improvement can be manifested in values which are easily measured--coverage, capacity, frequency, speed, reliability--or in those values which are less tangible and may reflect social facts or personal biases (comfort, prestige, sex appeal, environmental benefits, etc).  Either way, if you make a service more attractive to the population, more people will use it.  And the advantage that transit has over the automobile (considering only the geometric aspects of it, and ignoring the numerous negative externalities of cars which provide ample additional reasons for transit construction) is one of scalability at high density.
 
The reverse phenomenon is also readily observed:  when you cut service, ridership levels go down--decreases in line frequency or other service parameters will often drive riders to other modes, or to not make trips at all.

How badly do you want it?

These phenomena can be explained by the property of elasticity--a concept which is the way economists answer the question, "how badly do you want it?".  (Actually, it measures the inverse of that question--a lower elasticity means that the product or service is "wanted more badly").  Many transit advocates who know little about economics understand the fundamental concept of elasticity--the concepts of "choice riders" and "transit-dependent" refer to two different populations who express different elasticities with regard to their transit-using habits.  Choice riders express a high elasticity--meaning that their consumption (use) of transit is likely to change as the value proposition changes; if the fares go up or the frequency goes down, they stop riding, and if service improves, they may switch back to transit.  Transit-dependent riders express a low elasticity--they'll put up with a lot because they have no other choice, and conversely, improving service isn't likely to attract more transit-dependent riders, as those who need the service are already using it.  A third community to consider is the transit-averse:  those who won't use transit under any circumstances.  They also express a low elasticity, as improvements to the system are unlikely to entice them to increase their consumption (usage), which will remain at zero.

One interesting phenomenon concerning elasticity is that it goes up in a recession.  Even if the capacity remains adequate and the coverage remains the same, when a recession occurs, cuts to service are more likely to negatively affect ridership during hard times.  When a recession occurs and people lose their jobs, two things happen:  unemployed riders for whom transit demand was previously inelastic suddenly find it elastic, as they no longer need to be at work by a certain time.  And congestion on roadways decreases, increasing the relative value of driving for those who can drive (which is the majority of the population in most parts of the US)  .   This is why "death spirals" are a pressing problem for transit agencies during a recession--loss of revenue leads to service cuts which leads to loss of riders which leads to loss of revenue which leads to... you get the picture.  (When a transit agency finds itself in this situation, as TriMet appears to be, you had better hope that the pattern of panic/cut/cringe converges at a level well about zero).



Its all about the values

When publicly-operated rapid transit projects are proposed, there are often several reasons offered to justify the expenditure of public funds:

• Increasing coverage
• Increasing capacity
• Increasing service quality
• Decreasing operating costs
• Environmental outcomes
• Land-use outcomes
• Economic development

The first three are important to transit users (and potential users).  The others are important to other constituencies (the transit agency, the public at large, etc) and won't be considered further.  Whether any of these are important to a given rider or group depends on what the rider or group's goals are.  And if a person takes a more minimalist view of transit--s/he may not be interested in attracting riders to the system--and consider expenditures for that purpose a waste of money. While I can't point to research to back it up, it seems apparent that many of those who adapt the minimalist point of view are those for whom transit demand is most inelastic.  the transit dependent, who have every reason to be skeptical of proposed new projects--many of which will benefit some other community and adversely affect the particular service they depend on; and the transit-averse, who won't ride the system at all, and may view the entire enterprise as a big waste of money.

This dichotomy may affect one's answer to the question posed by Jarrett at the top of this article.   It's a common psychological phenomenon to project ones thoughts and beliefs onto others.  Thus, if an individual's personal demand for transit is inelastic (or one's own personal value system WRT transit focuses on tangible service parameters such as coverage, capacity, and performance, and disregards things like amenities or social acceptance), s/he may assume that this is true for others--and question the claim that improving transit quality may increase ridership.  Likewise, if a person's personal transit demand is highly elastic (or is motivated by factors specific to a particular mode choice), s/he may assume that increasing service levels (including by conversion to rail) will axiomatically drive up demand--and further assume that what is important to him/her, is important to everybody, thereby causing an overestimation of the induced demand.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between, and ought to be determined empirically rather than by ideological catfights between different communities and constituencies.

Transportation values, missions, and anti-missions

Here in Portland, there's a transit advocacy organization called OPAL (Organizing People/Activating Leaders), which recently called for a major shift of the priorities of TriMet: away from future development of rail, and towards improving bus service.  There are numerous similar organizations in cities around the country; the most (in)famous is probably the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (though the latter organization takes many far more controversial positions than does OPAL).  The point of this post is not to praise or criticize either organization, but to examine something more fundamental.

What OPAL is calling for is more than a simple change in funding allocation or transit planning strategies: they are calling for a realignment of TriMet's fundamental mission.  From OPAL's website:  "We need TriMet to prioritize working-class Portland, people who depend on our public transportation for access to the necessities of life."  OPAL, and similar organizations, believe that social and/or economic justice (in practical terms, ensuring that adequate transit service is provided to the poor), ought to be one of TriMet's fundamental missions, if not the fundamental mission.  While TriMet certainly does provide transit service to low-income neighborhoods, it would be difficult to argue that service to the poor is its primary mission.

Missions

In prior articles, the concept of transit values has been discussed--these are attributes of a transit system from which customers, or the public, derive some benefit.  This article discussed and critiqued a University of Florida paper which sought to apply Maslow's Hierarchy to transit, this one responded to comments on the first (and to related articles elsewhere), and this one gave a detailed list of twenty-odd transit values, without regard to importance.  The values listed in the latter paper were sorted into four broad categories suggested by Cap'n Transit; they are repeated here:

• Availability values:  Geographic coverage, temporal coverage, capacity, special accomodations.
• Value values:  Marginal cost, access cost, external costs, reliability, trip time, frequency, risk of accident, risk of crime.
• Amenities values:  Ease of use, understandability, ease of payment, en-route hassles, comfort.
• Glamour values:  Aesthetic/novelty issues, social status, self-actualization. 

Whereas values all are specific attributes of a system, the mission(s) of a system (and of the responsibly agency) are the overall statement(s) of goals which the system is intended to accomplish.  Whereas values reflect the how, the where, and the when; missions are the who, the what, and the why.  In the context of transit agencies, the "what" is more or less the same--provide transit to the public; missions differ in the question of why the service is provided in the first place, and who should benefit.  A mission, then, is the justification for the transportation service.

..and anti-missions

An anti-mission, if I may coin a term, is the same thing as a mission--a set of goals which the agency seeks to accomplish--but it's one that would be embarrassing to the agency if published.  Few agencies actively seek out anti-misisons; but they are a common result of political pressure from various factions, of self-aggrandizing behavior by public officials, and in some cases, of corruption.  In some cases, a goal or set of goals which are seen as beneficial in one locale may be seen as detrimental in another.  The origin of the term anti-mission is explained at the bottom of the post.

It's also important to note that many agencies operate under constraints which prevent them from fulfilling their mission.  Budgets must be balanced; credit, while available, is often limited in scope and hard to get, and few agencies have carte blanche to raise additional revenue through taxation.  An agency's service footprint and revenue base may contains extensive areas of low-density sprawl which are difficult to serve efficiently, yet which must be provided service to maintain the revenue source.  Even things like fares may be outside an agency's control.  In addition, many external funding sources, in particular those in Washington DC, come with numerous strings attached; and cash-strapped transit authorities are generally more than happy to jump through the hoops necessary to bring home the dollars--even if requires doing projects in a manner that's outside the mission.  It is useful to distinguish constraints from anti-missions.  (One minor issue I have with organizations such as OPAL is that they frequently make demands of agencies which cannot be met without a radical restructuring of an agency's external environment--but offer little assistance with the work of performing that restructuring, instead taking a "that's your problem--you figure it out" approach.  Sometimes it's an effective form of advocacy, but I often wonder if there aren't other ways to improve the situation for transit).

With all that in mind, we will now consider various missions and anti-missions (they are not identified as such--that is left as an exercise for the reader), and a rough ranking of the values implied by the mission.  This article is US-centric, unfortunately.  This article also generally assumes operation by a public entity, ostensibly for the common good--for private, for-profit operators, the only mission that truly matters is "make money", and the rest is an exercise in marketing.  :)

So, without further ado, the list.

Comprehensive transit

The first mission we consider consider is comprehensive transit--transit for transit's sake, if you will.  Many like to consider this mission the gold standard, asserting that its aims are based entirely on technocratic principles, rather than political compromises, interest-group politics, and other well-know attributes of the sausage factory.  Comprehensive transit advocates generally pursue the values in the order set forth by Cap'n Transit:  Availability, Value (to customers), Amenities, and Glamour concerns are last.
The problem with the "comprehensive transit" mission is that it's expensive to implement--and thus unrealistic in most places where there isn't widespread public support for transit.  (There is, in many places, widespread public support for road construction, and thus many state DOTs do get to build "comprehensive systems as a result--a state of affairs which has got us where we are today).  As a result, agencies typically find themselves pursuing one of the other missions (or anti-missions) listed in this article.


Social/economic justice

Next up is social and economic justice.  In support of this mission, transit is deployed as a tool to primarily benefit traditionally-disadvantaged communities, such as the poor or minority groups.  OPAL and BRU are both pursuing a social and economic justice mission (among other things), and take umbrage that TriMet and LACMTA don't necessarily share their priorities.
Values emphasized by this particular mission include low cost to users, good geographical coverage (emphasizing targeted neighborhoods and common destinations of the target groups), excellent temporal coverage (many of the working poor have jobs outside the normal daytime office shift), adequate capacity, and reliability and frequency of service.  End-to-end speed is less of an issue, as is service to wealthier communities.  Amenities and Glamour are unimportant.  Many who advocate for social and economic justice are suspicious of capital-intensive infrastructure projects such as rail of any sort (other than as a capacity improvement along an overcrowded route), viewing these as attempts to cater to constituencies other than the poor or minority groups the agency ought to support.

Low cost transit

A mission which is superficially similar to social/economic justice in its values, but antithetical to it in its motivations, is the low cost transit mission.  Here, the point is to provide the minimum level of service necessary to keep people on society's margins off more expensive forms of public support--or at is commonly (and indelicately) phrased, to get the poor to their jobs so they don't go on welfare.  Many on the political right advocate this mission, and view transit as a necessary evil, rather than a valuable public good in its own right.
Low-cost transit advocates generally emphasize Availability issues such as coverage and capacity; and like social justice advocates, don't give a rip about Glamour and Amenities.  Where they differ is in the Value category--whereas social justice advocates care about service quality; the low-cost advocate wants to minimize social cost.  Many transit systems in the US (including the vast majority of small-city systems) are of this sort--both due to conservative politics, and also due to transit-unfriendly land uses, which make any other sort of transit prohibitively expensive.  Given that, an aversion to capital costs or infrastructure of any sort causes low-cost advocates to invariably prefer local bus service (or BRT where demand warrants the additional capacity) to anything more expensive.

Environmentalism

The environmentalism mission is concerned, first and foremost, with improving environmental outcomes--lowering emissions and other forms of pollution (whether from vehicles or from energy sources external to the system), lowering energy usage, etc.  Environmentalist advocates generally view comprehensive transit as an import goal.  Zero-emissions vehicles are highly desired--a category which includes human-powered transportation, as well as movement away from combustion-powered vehicles.  Reducing automobile trips, and opposition to the private automobile in general, is an important concern.  In some cases, this is combined with social justice issues (OPAL also lists the environment as a key concern); in other cases, environmentalist transit goals may be motivated by a bourgeois constituency.

Externalized public costs such as pollution (and avoidance thereof) is the paramount concern; public costs captured as taxes, not so.  Spending money on zero-emissions or high-capacity infrastructure is a common desire.  Other Value attributes are also important, as are some Amenities and Glamour attributes--as reducing auto trips is a concern, advocates of environmentalist transit frequently seek to attract choice riders.  Bourgeois advocates who are highly motivated may care less about comprehensive coverage, and neglect "social service" transit in favor of more productive routes--resulting in less comprehensive coverage. 

Urbanism and community-building

The urbanism and community-building emphasizes the importance of land-use for transit outcomes, and the importance of transit in building liveable communities (by which is meant, among other things, urban land-use patterns such as high density and mixed use--and generally excludes much of suburbia).  Transit is seen as an important part of the urban fabric, rather than as a service to be laid down on top of an already-built environment.

Urbanist transit values often express a preference for local forms of transit rather than regional ones; in many cases, trip-elimination rather than trip-accomodation is seen as an important goal.  As a result, geographic coverage may suffer--the urbanist is generally not concerned with providing suburban service at all.  Transit-oriented development (service to new communities designed to be transit-friendly, rather than to existing settlements) is also commonplace.

Like environmentalism advocates, there is a bourgeois faction to urbanism; which is often criticized for advocating "Starbucks urbanism" and neglecting the needs of the poor.  This faction tends to place higher value on Amenities and Glamour, and has developed (at least in the US) an affinity for local-service, mixed-traffic streetcars, often on the grounds that busses will not attract ridership (due, of course, to insufficient Glamour).  And with any sort of community-building or renewal project, especially those geared towards upper income levels, gentrification remains a key concern.



Premium service

The premium service mission is all about attracting choice riders who are extremely concerned about Glamour issues (particularly social status).  In many ways, this mission inverts the traditional hierarchy and stands it on its apex.  Premium-conscious riders view not mixing with the "wrong" crowd while on the bus or train as a key issue (often justifying it on safety concerns), and often view Amenities as important--in particular creature comforts, and other enhancements such as on-board Internet service.  Ticket price is often less of an issue, though performance factors and safety remain important.   Many Availability issues are unimportant however--limited geographic coverage (excluding the "bad" parts of town) is seen as an advantage, and high capacity isn't important to an exclusive audience.  Many Premium riders prefer rail (though not always), and seating configurations are often optimized for maximum seated capacity rather than accommodating large numbers of standees.


Some transit agencies have discovered that offering such services at elevated prices is often a politically and financially sensible thing to do (assuming local traffic conditions are such that driving becomes an unattractive option).  In the Portland area, both WES and C-Tran's express routes to Portland have been accused of targeting a luxury market (in the former case, bypassing a frequently-crowded parallel bus line).  The travel industry has engaged in such price discrimination for years, of course.

Political patronage

OK, this one's an obvious anti-mission.  Unlike other missions on this page whose political acceptability may depend on political context, virtually no transit agency will fess up to making choices designed to benefit political sponsors--at least not unless they can plead coercion.  (And in some cases, agencies with noble intent may indeed be forced to accommodate rent-seeking power-brokers in order to remain intact).  But it happens--and in some cases, in broad daylight.

When political patronage is an agency's mission, it seeks to benefit a wide variety of political backers:  agency managers and politicians looking to pad their resumes with ribbon-cuttings, developers and landowners, vendors, tradespeople, and trade unions looking to have public money thrown their way.  Few of the traditional customer-focused values truly matter; as neither the customer nor the public is the intended beneficiary; whatever values are politically popular will be offered up as justification.  In general, though, the values which are cited include things like geographic coverage, capacity, and performance--all of which benefit from new infrastructure.  Glamour issues are frequently cited as justification as well; builders of such projects will often cite the environment, or the alleged unpopularity of the lowly bus, as a reason for building more expensive forms of infrastructure.  It is common for those pursuing a political patronage mission to pretend to be environmentalists and/or urbanists, and sometimes difficult for outsiders to tell the difference--however, the difference does exist.  (One thing to look for:  are the proponents of development actually interested in operating the new service, or merely in its construction?)

Labor patronage

In some ways, this is a subset of the political patronage mission discussed above, if one views transit unions as a "patron" in the same way as one might view developers or construction firms, then this becomes same racket, different customer.  However, I'm treating labor patronage--where a key part of a transit agencies goals consist of providing high paying jobs to its employees--differently, because transit agencies in the thrall of labor act differently than those in the thrall of outside capital interests.  (Note that labor here only includes an agency's own employees; not outside bargaining units such as construction unions--they are dealt with in the political patronage mission).


Whereas political patronage agencies are very infrastructure focus, agencies patronizing their own labor unions focus on operations--though again, not on providing service to the customer or the general public.  Values which are cited include high availability and frequency--providing extensive coverage to all parts of the region at all times of the day.  Reliability and end-to-end speed frequently suffer.  Infrastructure improvements are frequently regarded with suspicion--construction of rail, for example, may be seen as a plot to downsize the workforce rather than as a strategy for improving the overall capacity or performance of the system.  Local bus service is the mode of choice.  Amenities and Glamour are generally unimportant.

In some cities (San Francisco comes to mind, where Muni's well-documented practices which result in lousy service nonetheless enjoy extensive political support), labor patronage is an open goal of a transit agency--however in many places, this is too regarded as an anti-mission.  Whereas agencies pursuing a political patronage mission may instead pretend to be environmentalists or urbanists, agencies captured by labor unions instead frequently emulate a social justice agenda.  (A common accusation against BRU is that it is a front for bus drivers--the organization does tend to side with transit unions in labor disputes).

Tourism

Tourism and special event coverage are seldom a fundamental mission for an urban transit agency--the bulk of the riders on a system will be local regulars--but it is an important mission for some parts of some transit coverage.  Extra transit service for local events, such as football games, generally doesn't differ much from regular service, but tourist-oriented service may be another matter--and given the propensity of tourists to throw cash around, offer an excellent opportunity for price-discrimination.

Tourist-oriented service can be divided into two types--transit which is used by tourists to get places, and transit which frequently is the destination.  Many cities operate special services, often branded differently, for ferrying tourists between lodging and popular destinations.  And a few transit systems--ranging from well-known attractions like the San Francisco Cable Cars or the Seattle Monorail, to small-town operations like the Astoria Riverfront Trolley--are destinations in themselves; with tourists paying for round trips to nowhere (many of these also serve a useful transit function for locals as well). 

In either cases, important values for tourists are ease of use/navigation, novelty or aesthetic values, safety, and comfort--though on "vintage" services, the latter is optional.  Coverage and other Availability issues generally are not important.  Tourists, being unfamiliar with a city, will not appreciate having to memorize a transit map or a timetable to get around; nor are they likely to be in possession of a transit pass or exact change (unless in whole units of the currency).  This is an excellent way of practicing price discrimination, BTW--the cash fare on the SF cable cars is much higher (US$5) than for other Muni services, and transfers are not accepted; but there's no extra charge for passholders. 

Rent-seeking

Our final mission occurs when a public agency decides to operate like a private one, and uses its position to engage in rent-seeking.  Many transit agencies have monopolies on general-purpose transit within their region, and power to set fares--most of them set fares well below cost in order to attract ridership.  Some, though, will actually attempt to profit from operations.  Rent-seeking agencies are most likely to be found in cities whose socioeconomic or land use patterns encourage high degrees of transit use (and there's a large captive audience for whom switching to autos is not an option)--and where there is a great deal of corruption in the wider political culture.  Rent-seeking agencies need to provide sufficient Availability to make the service tenable--but beyond that, aren't keen on providing any other types of value to passengers--especially things which might threaten the operation.  Rent-seeking behavior can originate from a variety of factors--agencies which are dramatically underfunded; agencies explicitly chartered to earn revenue for a parent organization; or simple corruption. 


Addendum

One final note, on the genesis of the term "anti-mission".  In my field of professional expertise (computer programming), there was a movement in the 1990s known as the "design patterns" movement.  Early research on the topic was done by a pair of Oregon-based programmers, Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck (the former of which designed a novel web-based collaboration tool hosted at his software consulting firm in furtherance of the effort--the first wiki).  The seminal work in the field was Design Patterns:  Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, written by a quartet of computer scientists known as the "Gang of Four".   The work on patterns, and much of the terminology, was borrowed from a similar concept in the field of architecture--specifically Christopher Alexander's opus A Pattern Language.  In programming, a "design pattern" refers to a program fragment or structure which is beneficial and commonly repeated, but which is difficult to capture as a class or function or other programming abstraction.  (If any other programmers are reading this, apologies for being rather imprecise).

Not soon after the Design Patterns book was published:  AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis, which instead of cataloging useful ideas, instead documented bad ideas which were commonly found in practice--a notion known as an anti-pattern.  Anti-patterns are patterns; they're just ones that are bad for you.  And so it is with anti-missions, my humble attempt to repay the fields of public works for a quite useful notion.

More on transport values

The recent posts on the transit hierarchy of needs, and numerous other posts on the same subject around the blogosphere, have led some to (informally) catalog the needs that transport users have.  By "transport", of course, I refer to all modes of personal transportation--transit, driving, bicycling, walking, or combinations thereof.

In a followup post on his blog, Cap'n Transit reduced the various factors enumerated in the University of Florida study which prompted the whole discussion, into four broad categories:  availability, value, amenities, and glamour.   In this post, I do the opposite--drilling down into quite a few more specifics, even beyond the original paper--resulting in a list of over twenty separate values.  I sort the specific values into the Cap's four toplevel categories, as they are extremely useful.  My interpretation of the four toplevel categories may disagree with the Cap'n in a few areas.

It should be noted that I am not, in this post, discussing or proposing any hierarchy or ranking of these values--different stakeholders invariably will consider different factors to be more important.  I'll reconsider this question in a followup post; for now, though, a simple catalog of transport values will be used.

Availability

Availability deals with the question of whether or not a given mode or service can reasonably be used at all for a given trip.  As mentioned in the initial post, one cannot use TriMet to reach Mount Hood; the bus doesn't go there.  (One can use transit in Portland to reach ski shuttles, on the other hand, so TriMet may well be part of a trip to the mountain). 

Values subordinate to availability include:

• Geographic coverage is the areas that the service reaches (in a fairly broad sense).  If the nearest bus stop is down the street, the service is available; if it's 50 miles away, it's not.  The maximum acceptable distance for a service to be available varies based on quite a bit of factors--how long/far someone is willing to walk, whether or not biking or driving is an option, etc.
• Temporal coverage has to do with what hours of the day, and days of the week, the system or route is normally operational.  Does it run 24/7?  Daylight hours only?  Rush hour only?  Weekends and holidays?   Many routes, services, and systems operate only during rush hour on weekdays; a key advantage of automobiles is that for most motorists, their car is available 24/7.  A specific concern for many planned trips is whether or not the system will be available for the return journey. 
• Capacity, here refers to the likelihood that the service will be unavailable due to being full.  If the bus stops outside my house, but is consistently crushloaded, that negatively impacts availability.  Likewise, if a motorist needs to haul an entire soccer team to a match, a Honda Civic will lack the capacity to do the job.  A related issue is the ability to bring baggage or freight with you--can you bring a purse or briefcase?  A week's worth of groceries?  A yard of barkdust?

• Special accommodations/restrictions refers to how usable the system or mode is for those with special needs--the disabled, the elderly, those with small children, etc.  Likewise, if someone is excluded from a system or mode, for legitimate reasons or otherwise, the system is not available to them.  (A person with a suspended drivers' license, for instance, does not have driving legally available to them).  

Value

Value has to do with the overall quality and costs of the service, fcusing on  factors that might make a mode objectively unsuitable for a given purpose.  Value includes factors that any reasonable user might take into account, and aren't dependent on personal taste or preference.  Imporant value-based factors include cost, timeliness, and safety.

Cost considers how much needs to be paid to utilize the mode:  

• Marginal costs are additional costs incurred for an additional trip--things like fares, parking fees at destinations, tolls, fuel, and amortized maintenance.

• Access costs refer to fixed costs that must be paid to have access to the mode, but generally don't rise with additional usage.  Examples include the purchase price of a car or bike, license and insurance fees, parking charges at your primary residence.  (Note that many transit agencies permit conversion of marginal costs to access costs via the sale of monthly or yearly passes).

• Externalized costs are those costs which are borne by society at large, rather than by users specifically.  These costs can include things which are captured and levied as taxes, as well as uncaptured externalities such as pollution, roadway damage, congestion, disruption of communities caused by the presence of infrastructure, etc.

Timeliness refers to the ability of a mode to permit completion of a trip in a reasonable amount of time.

• Reliability refers to how often a mode meets its service commitments (availability, schedule, headway, etc)--can the service be depended on?  This includes delays and disruptions caused by any factor, regardless of who (if anybody) is at fault.

• Trip time refers to how quickly one can get from origin to destination--the entire journey is considered, not just in-vehicle time.

• Frequency refers to how often the service passes by an origin or destination--an important consideration for spur-of-the-moment trips or for when a scheduled departure is missed.

Safety refers to the risk of casualties such as loss/damage to property,injury, or death--to users of the system, operators, and the general public.

• Risk of accidents refers to the risk of casualty due to an accident (regardless of fault).  Are operators or drivers well-trained?  Systems, vehicles, and infrastructure kept in good repair? Is the right-of-way shared with other operators who might be reckless?

• Risk of crime refers to the risk of casualty due to a criminal act on ones journey, such as being mugged at a bus stop, or being run off the road by an enraged motorist.  Is there an adequate law enforcement/security presence?  Are the rules enforced?  

One final note on cost: Sharp-eyed readers may notice that the above discussion treats the purchase price of an automobile as a fixed "access" cost--you can't drive to work unless you have a car, and cars cost money.  This is contrary to the treatment of car-buying found in many publications (and endorsed by the tax authorities in the United States).  Many analyses instead treat the purchase of an automobile as a capital expense, and amortize depreciation based  on the usage of the vehicle.  The IRS, in particular, will permit qualifying motorists to deduct US $0.50 per mile from their taxes--an amount which includes a significant depreciation allowance.  I treat the purchase of a car as a fixed cost for the following reasons:

• Many motorists are able to avoid the cost of depreciation by purchasing used cars, or driving cars beyond their asset life.
• Nonwithstanding the above, cars experience significant depreciation in value simply by being parked in the garage; a car's age is every bit as important as its mileage or condition in determining its value.   (Many other durable goods don't have this property).
• Many motorists don't view depreciation as an expense that is borne as they drive.  A more common viewpoint is to view the purchase of an automobile as a large up-front expense (even if the purchase is financed), and which isn't amortized over mileage.  Motorists who are entitled to deduct miles driven on their personal autos from their income taxes frequently view the deduction as a windfall; as the US$0.50/mile figure well exceeds the perceived marginal costs of driving, which for many, is limited to things such as fuel, parking, and tolls.  

I'm not arguing that this treatment of automobile expenses is correct; simply that it accurately reflects the behavior of many motorists.  A common justification for rejecting transit use among many drivers is noting that the fare for their local transit system often exceeds the value determined by multiplying fuel prices times commute distance and dividng by gas mileage--an accounting which may be flawed in numerous respects, but is commonplace nonetheless.

Amenities

Amenities refer to tangible things which make the system or mode more or less present, but aren't likely to make it outright unsuitable for a given journey.
Unlike the "value" factors, which are more universal in nature, reasonable users are more likely to disagree on the importance of these factors.  Convenience, comfort, and other enhancements, are all examples of amenities.  Note that here,
convenience refers to the overall ease of using a system, or conversely, the hassles encountered.  (Jarrett Walker cautions against this word in its more generic--and ambiguous--usage; however it is given a more specific meaning in this post).

• Ease of use refers to any special skills or abilities needed to use the system (but which can be acquired by most persons).  Must one acquire a drivers' license or insurance?  Be physically fit?   
• System understandability refers to the ease of navigating the system--route planning, way-finding en route, the ability of users to have up-to-date information on service disruptions, arrival times, etc.

• Ease of payment refers to hassles involved with collection of fares, tolls, or other charges, and the enforcement thereof.  Are passes available?  Smartcards or stored-value cards?  Must one carry exact change?   Must one equip one's vehicle with a transponder to pass by tollbooths?  Must one carry proof of payment or other documentation?

• Integration with community refers to the hassles involved with getting to or out of the system.  Is there adequate parking at a destination for motorists?  Does getting to/from a platform require a long or dangerous walk?  

• En-route hassles refer to other issues encountered, such as the need to actually operate the vehicle rather than being a passenger;  the need to transfer, etc.

• Comfort refers to whether or not the system is physically pleasant or unpleasant to use.  Comfort excludes safety issues, but includes numerous questions such as sitting-vs-standing, ride quality, seat quality, creature comforts such as climate control, station/platform issues (indoor vs outdoor), privacy, the need for physical exertion, etc. 
• Other enhancements refer to other tangible things which might add value to users of a particular mode--WiFi access, food and beverage service, onboard media (radio, television),  

Glamour

Glamour includes non-tangible issues which may affect mode choice such as personal fulfillment, social status, etc.  Some people disregard glamour issues entirely, others choose to take retired tennis pro Andre Agassi's advice to heart.

• Aesthetic/novelty issues include things such as scenery en route, the architecture of system infrastructure (bridges, stations), artwork at stations, zoom and whoosh, the perceived high-tech or vintage nature of a system, the joy of driving that some experience, etc.  Novelty issues, in particular, are mainly important for tourists and persons trying a system or mode for the first time--nothing which is experienced every day will remain novel for very long.
• Status issues include attitudes towards other users of the system or mode, such as the avoidance of those considered unattractive, unpleasant, or undesirable (excluding legitimate safety issues); social status or acceptiblity of the mode (is it considered an elite mode of travel, or a mode of last resort), etc. 
• Self-actualization issues include other reasons which might affect mode choice.  These include the desire to: benefit or protect the environment, support the transit system or its workforce, show solidarity with a community, get exercise, or perform other good works.

More on hierarchies

This post, on applying Maslow's hierarchy to transit, appears to have attracted a fair bit of attention.  Jarrett did two pieces based on it, Cap'n Transit did an extensive five part magnum opus on the subject, and many of the other usual suspects have chimed in as well. There are few points I think are worth emphasizing.

Trips, habits, and investments.

The good Cap'n, in particular, breaks up the mode choice factors into four clusters (Availability, Value, Amenities, and Glamour), and mode choices themselves into three types:  single Trips, Habits, and Investments.

The mode choice for single Trips may be made for any number of reasons--curiosity, for expedience to a particular destination, to impress someone (such as a date), etc.  However, a mode choice that proves itself to be useful for large numbers of trips becomes a Habit, and when one orientates ones lifestyle around a particular mode choice, including spending money on it, it becomes an Investment.  Buying a car or a long-term transit pass, or making a choice to live in a place because of it's proximity to a particular piece of transport infrastructure (or to a particular destination--I live in Beaverton because that's where my job is, for instance), is evidence of an Investment.

Cap'n Transit goes into detail how this affects funding decisions as well.  I encourage you to check out the whole series at his blog.

Time and the luxury of waiting

Jarrett, and several commenters on the the original post at humantransit.org, bring up another important point:  As you move up Maslow's pyramid (here talking about Maslow's original work, not organizations of transit-specific values), you are frequently dealing with longer time scales for realization of needs.  And that significantly affects people's perceptions.  One commenter, Adrian, writes:

The disagreements you're alluding to are more about the appropriate time-scale for change, than they are about a pyramid of needs. The person waiting in the rain for a bus wants a better bus service right about now, but the warm and dry urbanist wants to create an urban form over the next few decades in which waiting for a bus in the rain will be less common.
So it depends on who you're working for; today's population, or the much greater population of the future. I acknowledge that the people of tomorrow don't vote now, nor do they pay for anything now, but that's why they need strong advocacy now!

Jarrett himself, brings up the story of the LA Bus Rider's Union, an oft-criticized organization of mostly-poor (and mostly-Latino) bus patrons in LA who were able to significantly delay the roll-out of LACMTA's rail system, on the grounds that it was adversely affecting transit-dependent bus riders in Los Angeles:

But as Maslow shows, they shouldn't expect these considerations to be very convincing to a citizen who's stranded on a rainy streetcorner, or in a stopped transit vehicle, because the city designed its transit to catalyze great urban life at the expense of making it fast and reliable.  That person will see other people's high-level needs being placed above their low-level needs.  

And once they have that perception, they're ready to join, say, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU).  In the early 1990s in Los Angeles, a critical mass of people saw their bus service being cut even as money went into long-term rail transit plans.  The rail projects were good ones, for the most part, but they were far in the future and therefore only relevant to people whose immediate needs were met.  As a result of the BRU's lawsuit, the Los Angeles County transit agency spent about a decade under a "consent decree" in which courts reviewed all their plans, to ensure that the city's massive and crowded bus system was not just protected but enhanced.  Today, Los Angeles is deservedly moving forward with rail again, but it's also a city where buses are taken seriously.

While there are ample grounds for criticism of BRU--it frequently wallows in racial demagoguery, and it subscribes to the reality-is-a-social-construct-so-lets-make-up-our-own strain of Marxism--BRU certainly had a point:  Los Angeles planners were trading off the needs of the present for the needs of the future, and those with present needs were none too happy about it.  Jarrett continues in a comment:

Yes, but you're talking about the future, and the future appears in Maslow's hierarchy (as fear and arguably also hope) on the Safety level. People who are working on the Physiology level are just not going to care, but they will care if you get in their way. 

The city we design has to not just be a great place in the future, but a continuously improving place at every step between here and there. And it needs to be improving not just in ways that we urbanist intellectuals approve of, but in ways that make it easier for ordinary people to meet ordinary needs. Good urban redevelopment does that, but putting things close together. 

But my point in using Maslow is this: Be careful when you hear an urbanist say that ordinary transport planning values like speed, frequency, reliability, or cost-effectiveness should be sacrificed for the sake of a redevelopment return. I've linked to two writers, (Patrick) Condon and (Darrin) Nordahl, who in different ways really do make that claim.

Why is this important?  Because with the current budget crisis affecting transit agencies around the country, the needs of the future are running headlong into the needs of the present--which was part of the point of FTA chair Peter Rogoff's controversial remarks a few weeks back.   And this conflict is at the heart of a burgeoning debate on TriMet's Milwaukie MAX project--wherein many local transit advocates are starting to suggest that the project be postponed (or canceled altogether) until TriMet's operational finances are in better shape.  The June open thread at portlandtransport.com has largely been taken over by this debate (though many of the participants there are libertarians who would scratch the project in any case).  Whether or not delaying the Milwaukie Line would help TriMet plug its operational hole is an interesting question--certainly, eliminating the debt service on the $39 million construction bond backed by TriMet's payroll tax would help; but it's unclear how fungible the rest of the project's funding sources are.  (It's also unclear if the project could be delayed and restarted in the future without either incurring a significant financial penalty, or losing out on outside funding and not getting it back).

A transit hierarchy of needs

Note: Much of the material in this post was taken from comments which originally appeared in this thread at http://www.humantransit.org, Jarrett Walker's excellent transit blog.  It has been significantly edited for the current article.

One famous treatise in the field of psychology is Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, which arranges human needs in a hierarchy from basic survival needs (food, water) at the bottom, to more abstract sources of happiness (self-actualization and such) at the top. The paper was controversial when written, and is still controversial, but its influence on the field cannot be disputed.
 

A hierarchy for transit

A similar model can be applied to many other endeavors, including to transit. I was going to make one up :) (and did so anyway) but then discovered this paper written by researchers at the University of Florida, after surveying transit users. The "Hierarchy of Transit Needs" as documented in the paper, is a five-level pyramid, with the most basic needs at the bottom. The articulated needs (starting with the most basic) are as follows--all text is quoted from the paper.

• Safety and security. Personal safety, safety for personal property, familiarity with route, mode, and destination.
• Time. Trip efficiency, in-vehicle time, waiting time, transfers, walk time, trip chaining.
• Societal acceptance. Acceptance. Personal and peer/society attitudes toward modes (for or against).
• Cost. Best value. Fixed (vehicle, assurance) and variable (gas, care, tolls, parking).
• Comfort and convenience. Better travel experience. Comfort. More reliability. Easy access.

The questionnaire given to survey participants consisted of a set of questions asking which mode of travel among two choices (each optimizing a given value) participants would choose.  The vehicle type was the same in each question--questions were of the sort "do you prefer the fast bus through the bad neighborhood, or the slow bus through the nice part of town?"  (That wasn't one of the questions; just an example to demonstrate the flavor).  One major issue with the paper is that the survey participants don't appear to be anything near a representative sampling of society.  Survey participants were recruited from a psychology class, a campus listserv, and a local church--and the demographic profile of the respondents was overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly students, and overwhelmingly childless.  (And geographically limited--the survey was conducted only in two locales; Gainesville, FL, and Savannah, GA--both Southern cities of a similar size to Eugene, OR).  Beyond that, I don't have any particular complaints about the methodology; though I'm not qualified to dive too much more deeply beyond the obviously-skewed sample.

My own musings

Prior to reading the paper, I had informally come up with my own list--which is based on my opinion and my opinion only, and has no scientific justification whatsoever.  But this is a blog, not a journal, so here goes anyway. :)

• Access. Does the mode serve my current location and my destination, at all?  Right now, I can't take TriMet to get to Mount Hood (you could in the past); so TriMet is useless to me for that trip.
• Safety and security. Pretty much the same as that presented in the paper. Is a user likely to get mugged, killed, or have his/her stuff stolen while making the trip?
• Reliability. Can users depend on the service? If a Greyhound bus coming to a town is frequently two hours later (or one hour earlier) than its scheduled time, the service is too unreliable to be useful to any but the most desperate traveler; conversely, a Greyhound bus that arrives within ten minutes of its scheduled time is more useful; even if it only runs once per day.
• Time and convenience. What Jarrett Walker calls "mobility"; what the paper calls "time". How far must one walk, how long must one wait, how long must one wait, and how often must one transfer? Is fare payment easy and convenient, or do riders need exact change everywhere they go? Is there sufficient information available, presented in a useful form, for users to make informed trip-planning decisions (including routing around delays or service disruptions, if necessary?)
• Comfort. This refers to basic issues like ride quality, seating vs standing, are the seats too hard or too cramped, climate control. Can something useful be done while riding the bus or train (reading, working on computer)? Likewise, are the stations/platforms/stops comfortable?  A train may have plush seats but if it is frequently crushloaded, it is likely to be uncomfortable.
• Cost. Cost to the user, obviously. (Externalized costs are another issue, of course; but many people are more than happy to externalize their costs). Pretty much the same as in the study. It is useful to distinguish three types of cost--incremental costs (what must one pay for an additional trip) vs access costs (what must one pay to have this mode available to them) vs system costs (what must one pay, as a member of society, to have this mode available to society?)
• Amenities. Niceties which don't provide a direct mobility or comfort benefit, but which may make the trip more pleasant or productive--does the vehicle/platform/station have WiFi? Restrooms? Food and beverage service (whether it be a dining car, or a vending machine)? Nice art hanging on the walls?
• Societal acceptance. Being a nerd, my (uninformed) gut instinct is to put this on the bottom; but some users simply won't use certain modes/routes/etc. due to various cultural prejudices. Dislike for busses among upper classes in much of North America is well-documented. Many transit services (chiefly long-distance services in the US) sell first-class tickets where, for a premium price, one can have nicer amenities, a comfier seat, and segregation from the riffraff--and don't think for a minute that the last isn't important. And bus segregation was an important concern for the US civil rights movement.

Observations

Obviously, my list is a bit more fine-grained than the one in the paper. The top of my list (the bottom of my pyramid) is an item (access) that appears to be considered a "given" in the paper. The big difference, as noted above, is the inversion of social issues and "comfort"; but as a self-proclaimed "nerd", I'm perhaps less sensitive to certain cultural attitudes and cues than are most people--or so I like to think.



A few things to note:

• Safety is very important, particularly in the developed world.  System safety is generally a given in developed nations, where most safety concerns revolve around personal safety (i.e. not becoming victims of crime while using or waiting for the service).  The study paper noted this--many who claim to value safety expressed a preference for private automobiles, where they wouldn't encounter unsavory characters, despite the greater chances of being involved in an accident in a personal auto.  (Hence the infamous Chevy add to the right).  In other parts of the world, safety is often sacrificed for greater access and coverage--not a month goes by, it seems, without a report of a train wreck with multiple casualties (often in the dozens) in a developing nation.
• Time is also very important, which to me is unsurprising.
• I was a bit surprised that in the UF study, comfort rated low--given that many of the pro-rail arguments in the bus/rail debate center around comfort.  (Indeed, the original thread at humantransit centered around how bus driver skill can increase or decrease ride quality).  
• One surprising thing was the low placement of cost--especially given that the sample was dominated by students, who are generally more sensitive to price than other segments of the population.  Income levels were not included in the demographic information published in the study report--though respondents were asked if they were presently employed on either a full-time or part-time basis.
• Social acceptance placed high in the UF study, behind only safety and time--and ahead of cost.   

So, what does it all mean, anyway?

Ignoring any particular methodological issues with the UF study, it is worthwhile to ask:  Is this sort of model useful?  I would say yes, with the following caveats:

• This sort of model is only useful as a first-order approximation--sufficient for abstract discussions of customer behavior; insufficient for planning purposes.  One issue with the "Maslow hierarchy" comparison--an issue acknowledged in the study report--is that it implies a stricter ordering of priorities than is probably manifest.  Customer behavior is doubtless too complicated to accurately describe with a bullet-ed list of values.
• The UF study probably has limited use outside of the geographical area(s) in question.  It is doubtful whether it applies to larger nearby cities such as Jacksonville, let alone ethnically diverse areas like Miami or Atlanta--or any place outside of the South.  (And for this reason, any attempt to perform a study like this on a national level, to devise the views of an entire country in aggregate, are probably of limited use).  
• The UF study also distills questions to their most abstract forms--values (safety, time) independent of any particular implementation.  Even with valid results for an area, one must consider what it all means in concrete terms.  In some parts of the world, for example, it is widely believed that busses are burdened with a stigma of poverty but rail is not--in other parts of the world, that is decidedly untrue.  
• A transit agency or planning agency looking to improve or expand its service, would do well to perform more detailed market research than this--in particular, segmenting the marketplace even finer than a citywide or regional aggregate.  (Many transit agencies do this already, or plan to). 

With those caveats in mind, though, it is useful to keep in mind that the factors which drive passenger behavior (and which planners need to be aware of) are varied and complex.  A proposal which focuses on only one aspect of the hierarchy, even if at the upper levels, is probably going to not be successful.  While it is useful, for instance, to focus only on time-and-distance issues for a particular discussion; actual decision-making will have to be concerned with much more.  How much?  That depends on regional values, and is very much a political decision--not something that can be computed by rote.

A common mistake is to assume that values, or their implementations, are global--this is a common phenomenon in bus/rail debates, where claims like "choice riders don't like busses" are frequently heard. 

And in some cases, it is probably desirable to disregard the stated values of some customers--particularly when those values include exclusion or segregation of other customers.  (A common manifestations of the "social acceptance" value is avoidance of persons or demographics considered inferior or suspect--which in all too many cases, means minorities or the poor).