More observations derived from the 2011 Metro Vancouver Regional Trip Diary Survey – Analysis Report.
The share of transit increased from 10 percent in 1994, to 14 percent in 2011. As others have observed, that doesn’t seem all that impressive for many billions of dollars spent.
But it’s not just the percent of trips that is important. It’s the kind of trips.
Transit has the longest trips. Look at the second column – headed Avg Kms in the chart below:
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The proportion of the longer trips by transit, averaging 12.6 km, is 20 percent.
That makes sense. In the suburbs, the shorter trips are for short hops; transit is for commuting. When going to the local school or supermarket, most drive.
And it helps puts non-motorized modes in some perspective. Yes, walking is “good”, but not so practical for those 10, 20 or 30 kms trips.
So when thinking about whether transit justifies the money spent on it, ask yourself this: Since walking represented only 1 percent of regional travel kilometres, would installing sidewalks be considered a waste of money?
That perception will be important if the referendum on TransLink funding goes ahead. Is transit with a low but critical percentage of all trips worth spending more money on? Is the growth rate justifying the investment? What would happen if that growth has to be absorbed on highways and roads?
Maybe we should we be applying a better measure as to how we judge worth.
This may also partly explain why commuting travel times reported in the census for transit were significantly than those for automobile. Unfortunately, neither the census or trip diary reported the commuting trip distances for the various modes.
The average commute time for automobiles is likely skewed down by those who drive short distances to work. It is likely that few use transit for these short trips choosing walking and cycling instead.
Unfortunately, most of the spinalysis in the media on the census did not consider this.
For an analysis to be fair, the travel times for trips of the same distance should be compared. And even then, the average time should not be used. Instead, the amount of time that people should (or fo) allow for the trip to be there on time should be used. This would account for congestion delays, incident delays, construction delays, missing the bus, ect.
I’m shocked that the average driving commute is under 10km. There must be a lot of short trips balancing out the thousands of people you hear about in the daily traffic reports who sit in 5km of bumper to bumper traffic just to get to a bridge.
I’ve often wondered what people consider part of their commute time and what value they place on the various parts thereof.
About a decade ago I moved to an unfamiliar neighbourhood and had to learn how to get downtown to work. I tried several approaches.
Transit was my first choice, but before I get into a particularly long story I’ll mention that I did drive to work a dozen times over the years. It was slightly faster than the direct bus and more comfortable, but by the time I found a parking spot near the roof of the parkade nearest my office and walked from there I’d hardly saved any time and the dent in my wallet was noticeable.
1. There was a bus stop just one long (E-W block) and one short (N-S) block from my house at the time. The bus was on a 15 minute headway and took ~25 minutes to get to the stop nearest my office. In the morning actual times were fairly close to the schedule so it was a logical first pick.
On rainy days that bus would fill up and I’d be tossed around with other wet standees, but the real problem was evenings. The schedule was meaningless and long gaps between buses common. Certain times of day the bus was near capacity until it was just a few blocks from my home.
2. That led me to take SkyTrain, wait for a bus, ride ~5 minutes and then walk 1km up hill to get home. I then tried that route in the morning, but missed the bus even more often than in scenario #1 so I stuck with the direct bus to work.
3. One day after having missed the bus home because too many people held the SkyTrain doors open, I decided to walk home instead of hanging around the station for the next bus. It was done mostly out of frustration, but it was the best decision I’d made in years. It took almost half an hour, but I knew right away it was the right thing to do. Eventually I could walk to the station in 19 minutes and get home in 22 when the traffic signals cooperated.
Walking to/from SkyTrain had many advantages:
– I didn’t have to worry about the bus schedule. I could leave whenever I was ready and not lose time waiting.
– I didn’t have to worry about a bus arriving early/late/not at all, or getting stuck in traffic.
– Trip time was very consistent and I had control over how fast I walked.
– Standing on SkyTrain is more comfortable than standing on a bus and even beats having a seat on a crowded bus.
– Walking is a low stress, relaxing way to get around.
– All that exercise made me feel better.
After a few months I gained daycare obligations that required a change in both route and work hours, but until then I enjoyed my commute.
Burnaby does not have sidewalks connecting some of its SkyTrain stations to adjacent neighbourhoods and businesses. The provision of simple, inexpensive infrastructure like sidewalks to SkyTrain stations is a basic function of municipal governments. One has to question the competence of that city’s administration, and the credibility of its mayor and council on issues related to transit, for not building them over the past decade.
The average transit trip distance is roughly the distance to downtown from each municipality in Metro Vancouver.