Bus Systems, Local and Express

Supply and Demand Side Considerations

In most developed cities, buses are no longer a vital service; indeed, service frequencies are often very low (hourly), a result of decades of adjusting to declining demand, as though bus services are unable to meet peoples' aspirations. This supply side logic often ends in poorly used service or none at all, the only question being how long it will take or how long subsidies will be paid for a service carrying so few people. For instance, in the United Kingdom (UK) pensioners have free bus travel, and they make up more than a third of passengers. However, most pensioner trips are not made by bus but by car.

A demand side approach is based on market research, looking at what incentives automobile users require to take some trips by transit. This is the approach that the sellers of all consumer products adopt, both to maximize sales to existing customers and also to find new products that non-users will buy. There is a considerable body of such market research, which shows that price is not the main driver for those with a choice but quality of transit service provided.

Would improving the quality of service, going “upmarket,” be the obvious way to attract riders? Sadly, further market research shows that even if a bus service could be provided that offered immediate departures from bus stops, running nonstop to the desired destination, this would only attract a very small part of auto traffic. One such study in Galway in Ireland, where buses presently carry 4 percent of all city trips, showed that such a “perfect” bus service would raise this to 8 percent, leaving cars with over 60 percent of all travel.

Land Use and Transport Coordination

Logically, if land use development and bus service provision could be coordinated, then the use of bus services would be maximized. Such an experiment was conducted in Runcorn New Town, England, built in the 1960s, where a dedicated busway linked all developments with a 40-mile-per-hour (mph) (65 kilometers/hour) frequent bus service, and the freeways were arranged so that internal trips by car [Page 333]would take longer than by bus. It was confidently predicted, when it was built in 1969, that buses would carry 50 percent of all internal Runcorn trips. The best managed was 15 percent, which did not justify a frequent service, so with increasing car ownership, buses now carry only 5 percent, no better than other UK towns without an expensive busway but higher than most North American cities.

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