Route 70 "snapshot" - 8 September to 5 October

This article analyzes the service quality on Route 70 throughout the month of September. Unlike many other routes, this is a local milk run route from Limebank to Barrhaven Centre, Citigate, and Fallowfield, and will feature slightly different charts than normal. It was formed out of pieces of old Routes 170 and 171 during New Ways to Bus this April. 

As always, data comes from Transsee. 

I chose this route to analyze specifically because of Wilson Lo's repeated claim of underscheduled travel times. Specifically, he says that the schedule allocates less time at peak than a driver would need to drive the route in the evenings; there is some truth to the claim that OC Transpo underschedules trips, but the problem is different in shape than what Lo suggests. As usual, there is a lack of coordinated thinking from pro-transit councillors, and major problems are either not addressed at all, or brought up in piecemeal fashion, preventing us from taking systemwide action. 

Cancellations

Throughout the tracking period, Route 70 had a cancellation rate of 3.2% towards Limebank and 4.4% towards Fallowfield, for an average of 3.8% in both directions. 

On-Time Performance

On-time performance will focus on the third week of analysis between the 22nd and 26th of September. 

In both directions, about 20% of trips leave their respective origin stations late, with eastbound trips delayed leaving Fallowfield slightly more often than westbound trips leaving Limebank. However, the Limebank bound trips are scheduled better; 40% of buses are late arriving there, whereas 50% of buses are late arriving at Fallowfield. The trend of Fallowfield-bound buses performing worse is apparent throughout the data. 

The deterioration of on-time performance along the length of the route suggests a route that does not have adequate buses, which can also be seen in the travel time analysis. 

During the morning peak, both routes see an average (for weekdays) amount of delays at the origin and terminus. 

During the midday, eastbound performance is worse than westbound performance, even with more on-time departures from the origin station. 

In the afternoon peak, eastbound punctuality is quite good. Nearly 40% of trips depart from Fallowfield late, but that percentage stays the same across the entire route to Limebank. On the other hand, Fallowfield-bound trips see 85% punctual departures rate from Limebank, but on-time performance falls below 40% by the time these trips arrive at the destination point. 

Even in the evening period, when there are should theoretically be low traffic congestion, eastbound buses are leaving Fallowfield late on 25% of trips, and westbound buses are arriving at Fallowfield with a 30% on-time performance. For staff and councillors who push for bus lanes on the basis that they improve reliability, and advocates who claim that congestion is a primary cause of unreliable service, results like these should prompt introspection. 

As is usual on Route 70, eastbound service performance is much better than westbound service. Problems with underscheduling remain, as large delays appear seemingly out of nowhere on the Fallowfield-bound service; Limebank-bound buses do not show as large a delay, but some delay still exists. This is another time period in which congestion is rare or non-existent, and where delays do accumulate (the Vimy Memorial bridge), bus lanes already exist. The delays on Route 70 on weekends are caused by poor scheduling, not by congestion or other causes out of OC Transpo's control (and therefore ones they are not responsible for dealing with). 

The below shows the line charts for Wednesday, 24 September. The charts for the weekdays are available here. 

Route 70 runs frequent service during peak periods only, but bunching can be seen in both the morning and afternoon periods. In the morning, one pair of buses can be seen together on an entire round trip, but PM bunching is better managed, with one bus being sent to Barrhaven Centre after arriving at Limebank as a pair. Bunching is apparent all five days of the week, and it is not always managed as well as seen in this example. 

Midday and evening service is relatively well behaved, but it is hard not to be at half hourly headways.

Travel Time

I have changed the travel time charts to show better information across the entire day. Information for every hour of the day will be broken out into their own box plots, with scheduled time being shown with a solid line. These charts take twice as long to make, so going forwards, the travel time graphs will cover the entire route, instead of being broken out into pieces. 

In the new charts, I am no longer using the 0th and 100th percentiles, as they require more verification than I can provide. Instead, the bounds of the tails will be the 5th and 95th percentiles of travel time. The colour bands remain unchanged. 

Limebank-bound Route 70 is scheduled with enough travel time in the peak periods and the evening, but midday service is not scheduled with enough travel time. This would not be a problem with normal scheduling practices, but with interlining, these delays spread to other routes such as the 74. 

The problems with the eastbound service are dwarfed by those with Fallowfield-bound trips, which as usual are problematic. These trips are almost never scheduled above the first quartile of travel times, at any time of day including the peak periods. This appears as the high "slope" of delayed trips in the on-time performance charts. 

Lessons Not Learned Whatsoever

The popular focus on OC Transpo's reliability problems, and I have to admit my guilt in furthering this, is the high frequency urban trunk routes. Even suburban trunks get less attention, and locals, whether urban or not, get forgotten. Their lower frequency means that fewer people use them, fewer people likely to post online use them, and less attention gets paid because their don't represent an urban ideal. 

Route 70 suffers from inadequate runtimes across the entire day, in common with many other portions of the OC Transpo network. Buses bunch in peak periods, they arrive at the terminal late, they leave their origin late because of this; these are all problems shared with the entire OC Transpo surface network. 

The lessons learned (or forgotten) in managing the surface network are applicable to both urban and suburban routes. A reliable suburban network is one that people can rely on to get to school, work, and reduce driving in the fastest growing transportation market with the highest travel share. 

Until next time.