Paul Supawanich and his colleagues want to make transit better. They see transit as a powerful force for good because it is efficient at moving lots of people.
The problem, as many transit riders will tell you, is sometimes transit isn’t actually that efficient in terms of getting someone from one place to another. There are many factors at play here, but one critical factor is the lack of resources within transit agencies to plan ideal routes.
Most agencies are facing budget limitations like never before, resulting in a lack of innovation and a limitation on the amount of time that can be spent planning routes. The risk of a new route not working as designed is money wasted, and innovation takes a back seat to simply running current routes.
If a route is slated for redesign, there are limits to the number of times planners can re-map the route using GIS software that is complicated and requires expertise. At a certain point, planners decide that what they have is good enough not because they created a great route, but because there isn’t any money left for another try.
Paul Supawanich
But Remix, where Supawanich works, is a transit route-planning tool that is entirely browser-based, simple to use, and quick to set up. It instantly shows the impacts of changes made to a route in terms of cost and population served, all while giving a planner complete control over headways and other details.
(For those who want a little more background, City Lab has a great overview article that will get you up to speed.)
I had a chance to talk to Supawanich, a former transit consultant at NelsonNygaard in San Francisco, who is now Remix’s director of customer success. We discussed the program both in detail and in a broader context. My thoughts below stem from our conversation.
With the advent of Remix, transit agencies can quickly and easily run many iterations of a new route. When planners can do the work more quickly, they can run many more scenarios than before, but at the same cost.
What does the average transit user get from this? A better route. A transit system that works efficiently to move them from one place to another.
This program also has great potential for visioning. Public involvement can be expedited, allowing the community to see almost instantly the impact of a small or large adjustment to a proposed route. Meetings could be far more interactive and informative for community members, especially using the Jane tool, which demonstrates visually how far an individual can go within a set time.
When the public can understand the trade-offs that planners consider every day, the process becomes more transparent, enabling meetings to be productive instead of adversarial.
Some might be concerned that this program couldn’t possibly incorporate all the minute details of transit planning while being so simple to use. And it doesn’t. Supawanich and I both acknowledge the program can’t, and should not be, everything to everyone.
Remix doesn’t plug into real-time traffic data, so it can’t spit out a schedule that is adequately accurate for putting a new route into service. Instead it uses existing agency schedules and combines segments of them to give an estimate of timing on the new route. The program does not consider, for example, limitations like the Rosslyn station in the Washington D.C. Metro that can only squeeze a certain number of trains per hour through or that a 60-foot articulated bus can’t make a particular right turn. The Jane tool mentioned above, while powerful, uses straight line distance (as the crow flies) rather than distance based on the road or sidewalk network. These are all important considerations that affect route planning.
Do these limitations make Remix less functional or ground-breaking? I asked Supawanich. The short answer is no. The long answer is that Remix solves a problem of iteration, of visioning, of communicating ideas to the public and the public communicating ideas to transit planners.
It is not meant to completely supplant traditional GIS mapping systems that take every little detail into consideration. The two are intended to work in harmony, where Remix allows planners to come up with a series of alternatives that can be fed into a GIS for further refining. By weeding out most of the less-desirable routes with Remix, the costly GIS work is only needed for the few, best alternatives.
Remix isn’t creating new functionality. Instead, it streamlines what planners already do, reducing time and cost requirements. By doing more with less, transit agencies can create route networks that more efficiently move people where they need and want to go.
Photo by King County, Washington