L.A. Metro Board approves NextGen Plan to improve bus system (Los Angeles: sales, home)

[sacreole]

The plan will increase frequency of buses, improve service on most routes and put more buses in areas with the greatest demand.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (L.A. Metro) Board of Directors approved the Next Gen plan to restructure the authority’s bus system.

The plan will increase frequency of buses, improve service on most routes and put more buses in areas with the greatest demand.

NextGen has been in the works for nearly three years and is the most sweeping overhaul of the bus system in 25 years. Under the new plan — to be implemented in stages, beginning in December — buses will arrive every five to 10 minutes for 83 percent of current riders compared to around 48 percent today.

L.A. Metro runs the nation’s second busiest bus system, but ridership has declined over the last decade. The NextGen plan is a direct response to better serve existing riders and attract new ones. NextGen is also a blunt acknowledgement that the agency’s bus fleet does the heavy lifting ridership-wise, carrying more than 70 percent of L.A. Metro’s boardings on a typical day. L.A. Metro’s own data indicates that its bus system is a mobility lifeline for numerous riders who don’t have many choices on how to get around. Bus riders have an average annual income of almost $27,000 (prior to the pandemic) and 57 percent are impoverished.

What riders need to know:

L.A. Metro will make changes to service over its next three planned service changes — in December 2020, June 2021 and December 2021. Most changes will come in June 2021.

Prior to any service changes, L.A. Metro will provide notice to riders both via signage and online to ensure the public is informed of the service changes.

When the plan is fully implemented, the number of bus lines running every five to 10 minutes on weekdays would jump from 16 to 29 and from two to 14 on weekends.

As a result, the number of Los Angeles County residents who could walk to bus lines running every five to 10 minutes would more than double from 900,000 currently to almost 2.2 million.

Under the plan, most local and rapid buses will be combined. These new lines will stop fewer times than a local bus but a few more than a rapid. Transit signal priority that has been a key part of rapid service will also now work these new lines. The result will be a faster door-to-door trip for all riders, whether they currently take L.A. Metro Local or Rapid routes. On average stops would be a quarter mile apart.

The 720 (Wilshire Boulevard), 754 (Vermont Avenue) and 761 (Van Nuys Blvd. to the Westside) will continue in service.

In a small number of cases, an L.A. Metro bus line will be operated by one of L.A. County’s many municipal bus systems — particularly in areas where L.A. Metro bus service currently overlaps with other transit providers.

In some areas with bus service that is perpetually underused or areas that are difficult to serve with full-sized buses on fixed routes, L.A. Metro is planning on launching an on-demand shuttle bus service called Metro Micro. The initial two Metro Micro service areas are scheduled to launch in December. Four additional zones are planned to launch in mid-2021.

NextGen was approved by L.A. Metro’s Service Councils over the summer and public hearings were held. Based on public input 35 changes were made to the draft plan — mostly restoring service in some areas. Overall, more than 300 meetings were held as the NextGen Plan was developed and more than 18,000 comments from the public received.

One new challenge going forward for NextGen will be restoring service. In response to safer-at-home orders and a drop in sales tax revenues and ridership, L.A. Metro is running on average about 80 percent of its normal service this fiscal year for roughly half the pre-COVID number of riders.

To fully implement NextGen as envisioned, L.A. Metro will need to increase service back to pre-pandemic levels. That has been a particular focus of some L.A. Metro Board Members and stakeholders in recent weeks. L.A. Metro staff are due to deliver a plan to the board later this year on how the agency plans to increase service while dealing with funding issues related to the pandemic.

The plan for now — pandemic and funding permitting — is to add service as demand grows so that the authority can return to pre-COVID-19 service levels. L.A. Metro Board Chair and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti said funding will be available to add enough service to meet NextGen’s goals.

Additionally, several bus rapid transit projects with funding from the Measure M sales tax are in the planning stages and L.A. Metro staff continue to work with cities across L.A. County on improvements including bus lanes, traffic signal priority and more comfortable bus stops with better protection from the elements and more rider data.

https://www.masstransitmag.com/bus/p...ove-bus-system

[looker009]

Have they not learned that year and after year less and less people is using bus. As soon as immigrants can afford a car they buy it as it's a form of freedom. The only thing will result in their new system is that even less people will be using it.

[V8 Vega]

Homeless ride the bus and threaten you and scare the hell out of you.

[floppo02]

Originally Posted by looker009

Have they not learned that year and after year less and less people is using bus. As soon as immigrants can afford a car they buy it as it's a form of freedom. The only thing will result in their new system is that even less people will be using it.

What.... More frequency means less passengers? Explain that logic...


A lot of times during school I would rather just stay at school than ride home because riding home just took up too much goddamn time due to frequency.

[looker009]

Originally Posted by floppo02

What.... More frequency means less passengers? Explain that logic...


A lot of times during school I would rather just stay at school than ride home because riding home just took up too much goddamn time due to frequency.

Public in general do not want to use public transportation be it bus or subway. More buses do not mean quicker time getting to your final destination. Wilshire subway line for example will not result in less cars on the road. Adding more buses will not result in more public actually using it.

[floppo02]

Originally Posted by looker009

Public in general do not want to use public transportation be it bus or subway. More buses do not mean quicker time getting to your final destination. Wilshire subway line for example will not result in less cars on the road. Adding more buses will not result in more public actually using it.

Well I had to make 2 transfers in order to get home, since there is like no proper route along the 405. So yes, if there was more frequency, I would get home faster. Although this would not have fixed my situation if I'm being honest because GTrans was the one that took forever to show up.

Anyways, one of the biggest issues is frequency. One of the biggest ways frequency affects time is of course through transfers, although low frequency has other issues.

It requires that you plan a trip ahead of time, and at a specified time. This disproportionately affects low-income workers because they mainly work by contract or part-time work, meaning variability in their schedules. With this variability, it would be extremely difficult to plan as a bus schedule that is fixed with low frequency may make it difficult or even impossible to get to work on time. With high frequency, this issue is solved.

For people where this is not an issue, it just solves a complaint that "I have to wait 15 min more" to get somewhere. Any convenience of using the bus system is lost if it isn't there with in a short time frame, considering the convenience of instantly leaving by just hopping in your car.

Separate point from frequency, all times in general will increase as stops are being reduced for the same routes, therefore making each individual route faster.

With all these reasons, I highly doubt that any minds will be changed with a more efficient, and convenient system.

P.S. During rush hour, expo line is faster than the 10.

[OyCrumbler]

Are they also going to put in and enforce bus lanes? I feel like that would be a necessary part of making buses perform better and get more people to ride. They'll really need to increase north-south service routes that do transfers at the upcoming Purple Line subway stations.

[vincenze]

Originally Posted by looker009

Have they not learned that year and after year less and less people is using bus. As soon as immigrants can afford a car they buy it as it's a form of freedom. The only thing will result in their new system is that even less people will be using it.

Not everybody lives in Winnetka and commutes to Santa Monica.

Traveling from one side of Santa Monica Blvd to the other is pretty popular, considering that it's very expensive to park a car on both sides.

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Elimination of express routes is a good idea. You can often notice how buses #20 and #720 run together, then 30 minutes of no buses.
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The system should also be less Downtown-centric.

Yesterday, I took a bus at night, and the driver told us that Downtown was closed.

[vincenze]

All new and altered bus line maps are here:
https://arellano.maps.arcgis.com/app...060e993acf61cc

[2Easy]

I'm confused. The "existing" frequencies that they list are over the place. Line 720 is listed as having an existing rush hour service of every 8 minutes. It was actually every 2-4 minutes pre-covid and is every 8 minutes only after covid. So is the new NextGen schedule only for covid? If not, the combined NextGen 20/720 service will be considerably less than what it was before covid. Slightly more than half.

But then the "existing" Silver line rush hour frequencies appear to be pre-covid and the NextGen frequencies seem about what they were before covid. So what are we looking at?

On the whole, my take so far is that it appears as if Metro is taking liberties with phrasing to present cuts in service as improvements.