First week of the Metro Transit network redesign

First week of the Metro Transit network redesign

Madison’s Metro Transit bus riders, myself included, spent this week learning their new bus routes and trying them out. The route changes improve the efficiency of parts of the system and pose challenges for riders whose rotes changed or who live in neighborhoods that lost their through-neighborhood service, including here in District 3. Some of my constituents asked me to ride the bus before and after the redesign and write about what I think of the changes. Since I’m a regular bus rider, this was pretty easy for me to agree to do. 

I used the Metro Transit bus to commute from the Hiestand neighborhood where I live to downtown in the morning (I work at the UW-Madison campus downtown), as well as after work or after evening City-related meetings, for four days this week (I worked from home on Friday). Note that some variation of arrivals/departures, a few minutes early and a few minutes late, was very common under the old network routes and it may be the case here too. Here’s how it went:

• Monday: In the morning I caught the D1 bus along Milwaukee Street on-time and it dropped me off on campus along University Ave two minutes late. My ride time was 34 minutes, which is 20 minutes faster than my previous morning commute. After work, I caught the D1 bus on campus along Johnson Street four minutes late, and arrived home seven minutes late. This was again around 20 minutes faster than my previous after-work commute.
• Tuesday: In the morning I caught the D1 bus again, on-time and arrived at campus on-time. I had a downtown meeting near the Square after work and afterward caught the C1 bus route along Basset Street three minutes late to get to an in-district meeting two minutes late. The C1 bus had some trouble with tight turns on the Atwood Ave construction detour route and I’m hoping this won’t be an issue when construction is over and the bus takes it’s intended Atwood-to-Cottage Grove Road route.
• Wednesday: In the morning I caught the D1 again, two minutes early, and arrived at campus on-time. After work I caught the D1 bus home and along the way the bus pulled over along East Johnson for 20 minutes, which confused all of us riders (the bus half full). After 20 minutes a new driver arrived, showing us that this was a driver shift-change and that some driver-change coordination had probably gone wrong, hence the wait. The new driver tried to make up time and I arrived at my destination 16 minutes late. This was not ideal, and I’m willing to chalk it up to first-week growing pains of the new process that the drivers are dealing with. Thanks to the other riders on this bus for their patience as Metro staff adjust to the changes.
• Thursday: I caught the D1 again that morning one minute early and arrived at campus one minute early. After work, I took the D2 bus westbound, on-time, from campus to the Fitchburg Target to grab some groceries before going to a family gathering outside of Madison. The D2 dropped me off at Target two minutes early.

My takeaways so far

For riders who live within walking distance of a remaining or new Metro Transit route, route service is now more frequent and it's much faster to get around town on the bus – especially to downtown and back. As mentioned above, with the exception of that long shift change that hopefully won't be a pattern, each ride of my commute to and from work is around 20 minutes shorter than under the old network route map. The real losses with this new network are for folks who live near the middle of their neighborhoods and who just lost their through-neighborhood route. These folks now have to walk to the edge of their neighborhood for a bus stop (some of our neighborhoods are pretty big, so this is a long walk for those living in the middle). This is even harder for mobility limited residents. I strongly encourage these folks to please consider Metro’s Paratransit Service program and Dane County’s Group Access Service and see if you are eligible for either program. The higher expectation of walking for middle-of-neighborhood is going to make sidewalk shoveling even more important this winter.

Metro is gathering feedback on the new system from bus drivers and from riders. They'll make some adjustments to the new network as-needed around August before the new school year starts and before UW-Madison students return to campus, when they'll have Ride Guides again to help that population learn the new network routes. The City's Transportation Commission will continue to discuss the new network rollout and that's where most conversations about future route changes or additional service will take place, so I will continue to highlight these opportunities for input in my future weekly blog posts. Special thanks to Metro Transit staff and in particular our bus drivers, who did a lot of extra work this week helping riders learn the routes and answer questions. Thanks also to the vast majority of riders who are being patient and respectful of drivers. We’re all figuring this out together.

Here’s Metro Transit’s feedback form and here’s their email address.