This is Part 1 of a two-part series on how Houston reimagined its bus network to better serve the actual demands of travelers throughout the city.
Houston joins Seattle as one of only two U.S. cities to see increased bus ridership in recent years, specifically since August 2015.
That date is significant because it marks the launch of the latest stage of Houston Metro’s System Reimagining to improve service for riders on tight schedules, weekend users, and residents of communities outside the center city.
Prior to the reimagining, Houston’s bus service had languished, seeing a 20 percent decline in ridership between 2007 and 2011. Opening three light-rail lines in 2013 afforded the opportunity to redesign bus routes to complement rail corridors. (Houston Metro subsequently undertook a multiyear planning process that we’ll describe in Part 2 of this series.)
Christof Spieler, who sits on the board for the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, Texas, served as an architect of the bus-system transformation. He points to three components of the plan that produced quick success at reasonable cost.
Straight, non-circuitous, routes make for a much better bus system in Houston
First, buses now run at least every 15 minutes along major routes. The result, said Spieler, is that transit “is there for you when you need it, rather than something you have to plan your life around.”
Next, routes were put on a grid. “Houston is a multicentric city,” Spieler explained. The radial patterns for buses, which had run loops rather than cutting across neighborhoods to serve various destinations over the course of the day, was found to be insufficient.
Last, Houston Metro buses now follow the same schedules on weekdays and weekends. Putting more buses on the road each Saturday and Sunday unleashed pent-up demand and dramatically increased the number of weekend trips.
Houston Metro Vice President of Planning Kurt Luhrsen said these changes increased bus boardings by nearly 8 percent over the first 12 months that they were in effect. During the first six months of FY2016 alone, boardings rose by 3.3 million. The explosion in ridership came at the modest expense of $12 million, or 4 percent of the annual budget. The new money went largely to pay for more frequent weekend bus service.
Getting on the grid
“Any city that has made an investment in rail or BRT has an opportunity to rethink their bus system as a result,” Spieler said. “Frankly, it surprises me how little that happens.”
As evidence that Houston had done so, he pointed to new bus routes connecting outlying residential areas to the central business districts that dot Houston. Rather than depicting suburb-to-suburb routes, the new Houston bus map highlights commuter routes that run in a grid pattern.
Spieler noted that on “just about every freeway corridor, we have HOV and managed lanes that are peak directions,” essentially giving commuter buses free passage into the city. This allowed local buses to move to the grid system that serves dispersed housing developments, workplaces, and shopping and entertainment destinations.
Riding out bumps in the road
After an initial burst, Houston experienced an unanticipated flattening of bus-ride numbers during the last half of 2016. Similar turns away from bus transit in other cities have been attributed to low gas prices and incursions by ride-hailing services like Lyft and Uber.
Luhrsen put the blame on a temporary slowdown in job growth in and around Houston.
“I’m sure you appreciate low gasoline prices” he said. “Those are wonderful for most of the country. Not so good for the economy and all of the companies that pump that stuff out of the ground here in Houston.”
Houston Metro held steady through the first three months of 2017 before posting 6 percent growth during April and nearly matching that rate of growth in each of the next several months. Hurricane Harvey hitting in late August and causing massive flooding through the first half of September, however, “cost us about a million boardings,” Luhrsen said.
Moving buses forward in difficult times
Despite challenges and more than a decade of decline, Houston’s public bus transit system reversed its fortunes. Spieler said that building on mass transit’s unique service advantage set the stage for the resurgence.
In particular, Spieler warned against just blaming Uber and Lyft for bus-ridership declines. They are simply a new version of cabs, he said.
To grow, transit agencies need to embrace their advantage in “moving large volumes of people in long, straight lines.” While ride hailing and vanpools may work well for scooping up individuals in isolated areas, they cannot replace buses.
While Houston’s experience can provide a general blueprint for other bus transit systems, Spieler acknowledged that every city is different and needs to take its individual situation into account. Seattle’s geography, for instance, divides it into quadrants, so it has been able to update its transit section by section.
Still, best practices have emerged. Baltimore and Columbus, Ohio have already redesigned transit bus service, and cities ranging from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles and Clemson, S.C., are undertaking revamps.
Taking a fresh look at the system and having the courage to remake large chunks from scratch can save bus transit.
Photo of bus stop by Sean Davis/Flickr. Bus-route map courtesy of Houston Metro.