CTA Tattler

The one express bus route I wish they would add would be from Howard Red Line to Kimball Brown Line. It takes me 15 minutes to drive from Howard to Kimball, but it takes me an hour or more to do it by train (down to belmont back out to kimball). Anyone know if there are plans to do this?

I think North Ave practically begs for a 72X bus.

The Irving and Garfield Expresses have never had the success of the Western route, judged by the proportion of riders taking the express. On Western, about 35% of the riders take the express, while on Irving it's just 25%, and on Garfield, about 20%.

Is the frequency of express buses lower on the latter routes? Is that why CTA feels that frequency is important? Logically it makes sense -- I'm not going to skip the local if I think the express is likely to be 10 minutes away. In other places, I've seen people argue that adding the same number of local buses would have had an equal effect on ridership on these routes. Maybe.

A critical factor is how much faster they are. That's one reason I'm interested in the signal priority experiment on Western. That will be for expresses only, giving them a greater advantage over local service, and bringing them closer to parity with cars. That'll be interesting. Latest info here was that signal priority was bumped back from Jan. 09 to later this spring.

Mark,

How long does a red line to Lawrence, then a bus to Kimball take? Is that faster than taking the red to the brown?

In my experience it is faster to do that, yes. Sometimes I've checked the bus tracker and decided I might as well go all the way to Belmont, though.

With regard to the 80X, the signs indicate that outside of rush hour the 80X goes from the lake to the Blue Line (presumably stopping at the turn around on the east side of the Kennedy). Only during rush hour does it go past the Kennedy to Harlem-Irving Plaza.

I ride it from the Kennedy west and it is usually pretty full. However, because the 80X goes to Harlem and the 80 goes to Cumberland (i.e. continues on a relatively low density route past Harlem), for people heading west there is probably not all that big a benefit to the 80X over the 80.

The X55 used to have extremely constricted operating hours and there were a lot of bunching problems on the route, such that most riders would just take whatever showed up first (even if the second bus in the bunch was an express.) I don't take the 55/X55 as much now that I live in Kenwood instead of Hyde Park, but it's still far and away the best way to get to Midway Airport from HP, not to mention the Red and Green lines, and that is exactly when you'd want the express bus.

Generally speaking, my experience is that the X80 saves anywhere from 5-10 minutes (usually close to the middle of that) between the Blue Line and Lake Shore in the afternoon. The morning runs the gamut but is in the ballpark of that when I ride. The big variables are traffic, the driver's style and aggressiveness, and how many red lights you hit.
This is an argument for considering adding more far-side stops!

Also, I wonder if they'll be changing the existing X80 schedule much, and when those schedules will become available.
They changed the X80 at the end of the year and didn't do any promotion of it that I've been able to find, which was pretty frustrating.

foresmac-

If I remember correctly, there was a North Ave. express bus that was instituted around the time that the Humbolt Park "L" branch was eliminated back in the '50s. The express bus was later eliminated in a round of service cuts.

Mrs. Tattler's experience with the X80 mirrors my own with the X49. I can count on many fewer minutes travel time over the local. I always wait for the express and it has never let me down. It's so much more pleasant not to make so many stops and not have the constant movement of passengers. Often the express will pass up at least one local en route.

CTA was conducting a survey on my bus yesterday to gauge opinion about riders' willingness to walk a few extra blocks to get an express. I can't wait for Monday when there will be more expresses. I love the X49. If it's wrong to love a bus, I don't care. :P

To me, the biggest benefit of having an express bus on a particular route is that you basically get 2 buses in 1 -- at most times of the day, you have to wait about half as long for a bus. I'm more than willing to walk a couple of extra blocks if an express shows up instead of a local and it doesn't stop at my particular destination. Instead of expanding express service on the given routes, why not introduce "express" service on other routes, or -- better yet -- put more buses on other routes instead..

I think there are probably some other places where express buses would make sense. But you do need the right conditions.

1. The local needs to be consistantly bogged-down by a unpredictable number of intermediate stops.

2. The express bus would need to be able to actually express between the stops.

3. The remaining local service still serves the needs of the street.

So if you're talking about a busy route that hardly makes any of those stops between the half-mile streets, it's not bogged-down enough even if it's often full.

If the express buses can't pass the local buses, there's not much need for them. You need to have reasonably free-flowing traffic that the local is pulling in and out of, and that the express can stay in. And these conditions must exist for most of the length of the route.

And finally, express buses don't serve people going from intermediate stop to intermediate stop -- especially if their going short distances. The people best served by express buses are those traveling long distances, and transferring on one or both ends.

Some of the most maddenly slow routes are ones on which an express bus wouldn't make sense.

For example, even though a ride on the 56 from the Jeff Park area to the downtown area takes for what seems forever, you'll never see a 56X.