Density vs. Service - Which Gets You More Ridership?

Everyone knows you need density and good land use to drive transit ridership, but frequent service also matters if not more. In today's video I talk about how these two complement each other. Enjoy!

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Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!

Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.

[OhTheUrbanity]

This was a fun video, Reece. Thanks for the opportunity to speak about density!

[nicolasblume]

2:00 frequency is even more important for transfers, it unlocks the whole network.

If the first train you take only comes every 30 minutes, you can often plan your activity around that and leave at the right time to get it.

But if you need to transfer and need to wait for the next bus for 30 minutes, you are stuck there waiting

[christopherwaller]

London is actually fairly low density overall, but manages a pretty good overall network. The trick is to make sure significant new housing and commercial development goes around transport hubs, with more modest development in areas with moderate public transport, and only smaller developments in places with the worst public transport; while simultaneously slowly ramping up the frequency and service levels of buses, by adding 24 hour services and new routes (including express routes) in places where a new station or line is hard to justify given TfL's financial constraints.

[cjthompson]

It’s both honestly. Demand has to be there period. I live in Houston which is low density but the trains made those corridors VERY dense. On the other hand, we revamped our bus network some years back which helps the low density outlying areas. No more 1 hour between buses. So it can be both.

[mdhazeldine]

It's both. Also simple payment, affordable pricing, integrated ticketing, reliability and comfort increase ridership too, although perhaps less than those first two things

[Lucius_Chiaraviglio]

It's not just the density -- in the United States (and judging from the aerial footage in the video, also in some of Canada), the _layout_ of suburban neighborhoods has been intentionally designed to be much worse for transit than density alone would suggest. This consists of squiggly streets and cul-de-sacs that US government policy intentionally encouraged from the 1930s onwards, making enormous areas of automobile-dependent neighborhoods, not only in the suburbs, but also within major city limits (like in Atlanta, GA, where I grew up). This is going to be extremely difficult to undo, especially given that the attraction to this design is driven by innate desire to keep out _the other_ (and it drives and synergizes with NIMBYism).

[jmlinden]

Density affects cost. Low density means more miles of track, which is more expensive, and fewer riders to split that cost between. It doesn't directly affect ridership - many commuter rail lines have high ridership despite serving low density suburbs. However, high cost will indirectly affect ridership as people seek alternate options.

[krysc]

Depending on the system "a little late" equals either just missing your connection bus for the next hour, or the last bus for the day. Been there, done that, sucks in the middle of prairie winters.

I know you mentioned it in previous videos, a lot of NA suffers from focusing on routing people to downtown cores, which ends up making quick 10 mins trips by car take upwards of an hour or more by transit. Hell in a previous major city, I lived a 10 min drive from my job, 45 mins walk.... or an hour and 10 mins 2 bus trip, all because the focus of the region was getting people down town.

I'm glad metro Van and translink are working on the cross town connections over the next 10 years and 30 years.

But your video does highlight a major issues cities like Saskatoon faces where they're stuck in the circular thinking,

No one takes transit because its not frequent enough/direct enough > City doesn't fund more frequency or add additional routes, because... > No one takes transit because its not frequent enough/direct enough...

Rinse and repeat.

[artirony]

Man, every day I miss the Taipei MRT because it had both. An MRT stop was basically always within walking distance wherever I went in the city and probably the longest I ever waited for a train was 10 minutes

[andyjiang]

Here in Madison, Wisconsin, the government is hesitant to increase the frequency of many bus routes that run buses once an hour because of low ridership, which is kind of frustrating because if buses only run once an HOUR of course ridership would be low. I'm sure public transit can work anywhere besides the exurbs and countryside as long as service is frequent enough and target the right places.

[daniaaal]

I think urban layout matters just as much as density or service. Density is all well an fine, but if amenities are far apart and streets are poorly designed, then people won’t be incentivised to walk around (especially if it’s unsafe). Having a walkable neighbourhood ensures people can get basic necessities like groceries, food as well as schs and work without possibly little to no requirement for transit. It’s only a matter of whether they want to for the sake of a bit more convenience.

For instance, I lived in a public housing apartment in a neighbourhood called Admiralty in Singapore. Grocery, food courts clinics were literally two blocks away from where I live. I only had to walk. Meanwhile, my secondary and primary schools where just across the street. I rarely had to take the bus. Walking and cycling were very much the way I moved around in my neighbourhood. I only needed to take the train if I were visiting my grandmother or going out to the central business district where most of the touristy places are. As a teenager, I spent less than $20 on transit every month.

[tazzer]

It's service. One of the busiest railway lines in brisbane, goes through nothing but fairly low density suburbia, but it has a decent frequency and excellent walk up ability

[johnchambers]

I agree that both factors affect transit usage. I live in a close in Philadelphia suburb and have a bus route that runs past my house that serves as a feeder to the city elevated-subway rail line. Our housing is a mix of single and twin homes and some row homes. However the main problem with our bus line is frequency. At rush hour weekdays it runs about every 20 minutes. However off peak and on Saturday it only operates every hour. There is no Sunday or Holiday service. So if I am not traveling into downtown Philadelphia I usually drive to the mall or shopping center since if I miss a bus the wait time is too long. SEPTA our transit agency has changed the routing of the bus several times and is planning to do so again. But without more service I do not see how they should expect higher ridership unless gas prices go higher. As usual they complain about government funding but in many cases they do things that discourage riding transit. Like needing to buy a transit card ahead of time to get the best price to ride and the lack of interchange fares between the commuter rail and the city or suburban bus and trolley network. If the fares and schedules worked together, more people would use the service and then possibly reduce the need for more government operating subsidies.

The other thing with frequency, is that even if a given route is not perfect for you, then you are penalised by a transfer. Long transfer times are another factor that makes people consider taking the car, since two 10 minute rides can quickly become 50 minutes, if the transfer times are long, due to lower frequency.

[TheHothead]

I feel like if you do want to improve transit, start by increasing service frequency, then observe which routes do the best relative to before and adjust accordingly. Alternatively, build the transit first and plan for density around it.

[TomPVideo]

Interesting point about Vancouver having newer density than many other places and that feeds the ridership numbers of the Skytrain.

Get up on one of the mountains and you can basically trace the rail lines by the tower blocks in what is a pretty solid "tall and sprawl" we got going on here. But something that ill add in is that of the 23 municipalities in Metro Vancouver, 7 now have Skytrain with those 7 having about 3/4rs of the population. The train then acts as a very strong magnet for growth within those large municipalities and feeding a very distributed, but concentrated, growth pattern.

At this point, we are already getting action on orbital express routes to link the outer areas. What also helps ridership is the largest university campus has such a large draw that basically every route going to it is a frequent one. Also also we dont have urban freeways into the core of the city so transit options arent competing with "one more lane bro" syndrome.

[hazptmedia]

You know its a good day when RM Transit uploads!

[JKK_]

2:00 I'm always having to explain to people that frequency = speed. For example I'll always recommend taking the cheaper Piccadilly line instead of the Elizabeth line to and from Heathrow as the Elizabeth line is so infrequent to Heathrow with 15-30mins between trains. You pay 3x for the ticket to save 5mins to zone 1 but then waste more than that standing around.

[mildlydispleased]

London is not very dense (Not Houston levels of sparce) but still quite spread out, the suburbs go on seemingly forever yet most people use public transport at least a few times a week, if not every day.

[origuy]

I think of it as:

Transit is a magnet. Passengers are smaller magnets that stick to transit. Density is how many smaller magnets there are. Good service is to have as few possible magnets deciding to break the laws of magnetic physics and not stick to the transit magnet.

Regarding service, my inner densha otaku wants to see more Japanese trains on north american tracks. I'd love to see all single deck trains running on local and limited rapid services, and mixed single deck and double deck trainsets on rapid and express services. (Imagine something like the Tokaido, Joban, or soon Chuo lines, except half of the train is double decks and there are bigger doors and stairways on the double deck cars, compared to the current green cars. I'd say don't go 100% double deck so you can have extra door capacity from the single decks, but still have more double deck cars than current JR trains nonetheless.) These trains would be a standard gauge version of the E231 or E233 series trains (the best trains in the world). Also, convert light rail systems to Japanese suburban systems, like how Japan converted the old interurbans to suburban systems. (You actually mentioned this in an old video, it's actually where I learned about that!)

When it comes to development, I personally like Japanese suburbs a lot more than modern developments. Something about those small apartments along a narrow street, separated by wooden walls, next to those yellow and black railroad crossings with trains going by every few minutes is just a vibe to me. (The Keio line and it's suburbs it serves is one of my favorite rail lines in the world.) What do you think?