Bicycling and transit elasticity ?

[WAngell]

How difficult is it for transit to ramp up and down based on weather? If we achieved perhaps 15% modal share of bicycling (commute, school, grocery runs, and dinner), which should be very feasible, how well can a transit system react to increased demand during inclement weather? How costly? Unintended consequences?

[FISHMANPET]

On a rapid enough time scale to have any difference, probably impossible. You'd have to have those drivers in buses along the route, getting paid the same amount they could as if they were driving the route. At which point they may as well just be running the route providing frequent service anyway.

[Tcmetro]

The current set-up is for run picks to change four times a year. I doubt that Metro Transit would easily fill temporary positions for the winter only. Additionally, more buses would need to be purchased to operate for a few months of the year. 100 extra buses (appx. a 10% increase in fleet) would have a capital cost of around $60 million or so every 12 years in addition to maintenance and overhaul costs.

In short, very difficult.

[FISHMANPET]

Inclement weather could also cover sudden downpour, strong winds, intense heat. I don't think it would be just a winter thing, it would be an all year thing.

[RailBaronYarr]

Yeah I guess I'd rather have year-round predictable, frequent bus service and timetables. Minneapolis has a year-round bike mode share for all trips of 5.1%, not much lower than the summer mode share of 6.4%. See here (pg 127 of the pdf). For commuters those numbers are 10.8% vs 9.2% (which are higher than Census commuting estimates that only ask the primary mode but miss folks who sometimes bike/walk/bus). So the relative drop in bikers for a relatively small portion of the year isn't worth the wasted costs of extra buses to ramp up and the costs of hiring/training a seasonal workforce only to let them go. Just run bigger buses or more buses all year round and let folks be happy when a few of their comrades decide to bike in the summer. My opinion, anyway.

[Silophant]

Yeah. Any route where the vehicles are regularly at more than 75% of full capacity should really be in line for capacity upgrades, whether that winds up being higher frequencies, larger vehicles, or the whole aBRT treatment.

[SamtheBusNerd]

This is how Copenhagen works. 45% of Copenhagen city residents bike to work (up from 36% in 2012, btw- good infrastructure works ) and about 30% take transit. The trains have excess capacity, which helps, but in general buses are just severely overcrowded when it's not good cycling weather. It's not ideal but most folks who take transit regularly know it's not a daily thing, and it encourages people to bicycle. I know they sometimes put reserve buses into service, too, but not a ton.

[WAngell]

I would guess that rail options like LRT or Tram would be much easier to ramp up for seasonal or single event (sports, concert, snow/cold) since cars could simply be added and wouldn't require additional personnel (or much additional personnel?)?

Do you know if Copenhagen simply accounts for the extra ridership and knows that they'll be somewhat inefficient the rest of the year? (BTW, the story of Copenhagen jumping from 32% to an estimated 45% in just 2 years due to construction projects making auto travel difficult and time consuming is quite interesting). It'll be interesting to watch over the next few years. An expat neighbor in De Pijp (Amsterdam) would drive to his office until a very similar construction project made it so difficult that he began riding. He says he'll not go back to this car afterwards.

[EOst]

There are limits on how much you can ramp up capacity on the (existing) LRT lines, since most trains seem to be three-car anyway, and that's the longest train any of the downtown stations (or blocks, for that matter) can take.

[FISHMANPET]

We run 3 car trains pretty much all the time anyway so there's no room to increase capacity during busy times by just adding cars for free.

[LakeCharles]

We run 3 cars now when 5% of people bike. But in a world where we achieve 20% bicycle modal share, we could drop to 2 cars as we'd lose a bunch of riders and then ramp back up to 3 cars for free anytime.

[SamtheBusNerd]

Do you know if Copenhagen simply accounts for the extra ridership and knows that they'll be somewhat inefficient the rest of the year? (BTW, the story of Copenhagen jumping from 32% to an estimated 45% in just 2 years due to construction projects making auto travel difficult and time consuming is quite interesting). It'll be interesting to watch over the next few years. An expat neighbor in De Pijp (Amsterdam) would drive to his office until a very similar construction project made it so difficult that he began riding. He says he'll not go back to this car afterwards.

I'm honestly not sure. I know the S-tog, which is their commuter rail system that runs like a metro through the city, is pretty overbuilt with huge trains that don't really ever fill up. Denmark is very into statistics and counts of pretty much everything- especially transportation-related things- so it wouldn't suprise me if they had figured out how much extra capacity was worth it to handle bad weather days.