More Bus Moves

[jajuan]

1 minute ago, artthouwill said:

There are viable routes that could use artics like Ashland and Western Avenues.   North Park certainly could run the artics assigned to the 22 on Western instead.   However we know that 74th doesn't have space for artics which would mean that another garage like 77th would have to take those routes and artics as well. 

Well actually the return of the X9 and X49 seems to have mitigated crowding issues on buses serving the main stretches of Ashland and Western. Buses haven't really been crowded to the degree I observed before the express buses on for those corridors returned almost a year ago. The artics would be running half empty at this point. Therefore the artics that do run on the 22 are better served staying on Clark. But I will agree that maybe 77th garage will need to get over its aversion to having artics because that's really the only place that they can practically go if not kept at Chicago Garage, despite the shortages that have been happening recently at 103rd since those artics assigned there that have been sidelined will be repaired and presumably going back to 103rd. All the other artic garages, including 103rd with its shortages, can't take on anymore artics. They're all at overstacked territory especially North Park with about 130 assigned.

[Master58]

On 12/1/2016 at 7:12 PM, andrethebusman said:

Look for artics off #66 with winter pick. Too many delays.

I'm not surprised especially with all the delays on the #66 I knew they would lose their artics,  so now it looks like 103rd will get half of their artics back and possibly kedize or North park will get the rest, and with 77th not wanting artics i doubt they put them there. i can also see north park getting the rest of the 4300s from 103rd while 103rd gets Chicago's artics, who knows all I can say I can't wait to see what the winter pick looks like. 

[artthouwill]

5 hours ago, geneking7320 said:

Do you folks think that the artics would benefit from having 3 doors instead of just 2?

Also if more people would exit using the rear doors [articulated buses or not] service might be better.

Once upon a time when Las Vegas ran artics on the Strip, those buses had three doors.   It worked very well then,  at least to me,  bu then they went to the Deuces . 

However I don't think that 3 door artics would work at all here in Chicago.   There's no parking on the Strip at all which made loading and alighting easy.  That scenario doesn't exist in Chicago.   Add in bike lanes and it will never happen here.  The closest thing to that would be the BRT, which I believe is dead in Chicago. 

[Sam92]

17 hours ago, Busjack said:

 

And if we are to believe that they don't work on Chicago, they won't work there.

On art's point, 66 has weekly average ridership of 22,349, while 20 has 16,182, 72 has 15,059, 54 has 10,390, and 74 has 11,555 (per July 2016 ridership report).  22 and 151 have similar ridership to 20, but what I figure is that after77th rejected them for 79, the surplus was allocated to NP, which appeared to be the only garage left that could handle them.

Nah the artics 77th rejected were sent to 103rd to make 26 all artic and throw a few into school runs interlining with downtown express routes. Some went to kedzie as well but I don't really know how those have been used on kedzie's behalf 

[jajuan]

6 hours ago, Master58 said:

I'm not surprised especially with all the delays on the #66 I knew they would lose their artics,  so now it looks like 103rd will get half of their artics back and possibly kedize or North park will get the rest, and with 77th not wanting artics i doubt they put them there. i can also see north park getting the rest of the 4300s from 103rd while 103rd gets Chicago's artics, who knows all I can say I can't wait to see what the winter pick looks like. 

We tried the cramming 300-plus artics in three garages before and it didn't exactly work. It caused capacity issues in the garages especially at Kedzie. And 103rd has not had any net artic losses as much as it may be wanted to believe. It always averaged at least 60 artics. So its current official standing at roughly 70 to 75 is a net gain over what it had a history of having. 77th is just going to have to take on artics again if Chicago is losing them.

3 hours ago, artthouwill said:

Once upon a time when Las Vegas ran artics on the Strip, those buses had three doors.   It worked very well then,  at least to me,  bu then they went to the Deuces . 

However I don't think that 3 door artics would work at all here in Chicago.   There's no parking on the Strip at all which made loading and alighting easy.  That scenario doesn't exist in Chicago.   Add in bike lanes and it will never happen here.  The closest thing to that would be the BRT, which I believe is dead in Chicago. 

CTA effectively killed the BRT dreams on Ashland when it proposed a design that kills almost all left turns from Irving Park to 95th. It was in dreamland by thinking it would get away with that especially with Emanuel's administration killing off traffic lanes across the city for an excessive number of bike lanes.

[Sam92]

7 hours ago, Master58 said:

I'm not surprised especially with all the delays on the #66 I knew they would lose their artics,  so now it looks like 103rd will get half of their artics back and possibly kedize or North park will get the rest, and with 77th not wanting artics i doubt they put them there. i can also see north park getting the rest of the 4300s from 103rd while 103rd gets Chicago's artics, who knows all I can say I can't wait to see what the winter pick looks like. 

I don't really know too much about 103rd getting too many more artics unless #2 gets assigned there, downtown 28 trips get artics or they possibly decide that 3 and 4 meet cta's standards of a local route that can handle artics and decide to have 103rd take a few runs. Of course on the side of 2, 3 and 4 you might as well say 77th should just get what Chicago is tossing out. Unless they want 150-170 artics at NP or 90 artics each at kedzie and 103rd if they get split.  At this point adding artics to 103rd is gonna put them close to the amount they had for the Dan Ryan shutdown which was 92 so this is definitely gonna be an interesting situation or as @jajuan says 77th's gonna just have to get over it. I've asked a few drivers about that btw and they mainly said it was general dislike about the way they handled,  things like the back end of the bus drifting or so. 

[jajuan]

13 minutes ago, Sam92 said:

Nah the artics 77th rejected were sent to 103rd to make 26 all artic and throw a few into school runs interlining with downtown express routes. Some went to kedzie as well but I don't really know how those have been used on kedzie's behalf 

They replaced the 4300s that were at Kedzie when they mainly went to North Park with the last two they had eventually going to 103rd. And yeah 26 initially went all artic after the 77th artic purge, but with the service expansions on that route that status now only applies to rush service. Off peak hours it's mostly 40 footers.

[Sam92]

3 minutes ago, jajuan said:

They replaced the 4300s that were at Kedzie when they mainly went to North Park with the last two they had eventually going to 103rd.

Kedzie's 4300s were already replaced by 4000's traded from north park.  North park got the 4300's from kedzie in the same fashion they did from Chicago and 77th through a few weekend trades of 4000's for 4300's.  Then when artics came off 79th,  4176-4192 went from 77th to 103rd, while 4193-4207 went to kedzie which basically resulted in a net increase for both

[BusHunter]

On 12/01/2016 at 7:12 PM, andrethebusman said:

Look for artics off #66 with winter pick. Too many delays.

I think that might be a mistake. I would only do that because of the possibility of an icy winter but because #66 is not on lsd or has lots of turns it would seem to be ok.

Now all that will happen is a fleet increase at chicago to handle the extra capacity needed. I can't imagine the delays would be from traffic but from extra long boarding times as you are asking a bus to do typically 1 1/2 times the work of a 40 footer. I don't really see the difference between that delay and the gridlock delays you will get from going around multiple buses but this is just my 2 cents. It is what it is I guess.

[Busjack]

2 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Nah the artics 77th rejected were sent to 103rd to make 26 all artic and throw a few into school runs interlining with downtown express routes. Some went to kedzie as well but I don't really know how those have been used on kedzie's behalf 

I don't know the specifics of all interim moves, but pretty much all the diesel artics are at NP, while some were originally at 77th. Whether they first went somewhere else and then swapped for hybrid artics, I don't know, but the net is that NP got them. See maths22's tracker, say about 8:00 a.m. yesterday.

What may be significant in connection with observations that J14 is short is that at the same time, maths22's tracker shows 12 4000s and 6 4300s for a total of 18 artics. However, it shows absolutely no 1000s, so there might be an electronic glitch there. However, the frequency seems down at that time of day to every 6 minutes for a 2 hour round trip, which indicates that coverage is down to 20 buses, and alternate trips start at 93rd, so maybe that's correct.

[Busjack]

36 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

Now all that will happen is a fleet increase at chicago to handle the extra capacity needed.

Again, we'll have to look at the frequency in the new schedule compared to the existing one.Around 7-8 a.m. they now run about every 3-4 minutes from Sacremento, but half that from Austin, and some start at Pulaski (garage).  Similarly, half the p.m. rush trips end at Pulaski.Thus, on art's point, there are already some short trips. Personally, I don't see frequency going up to every 2 minutes, especially if CTA's bus bunching problem hasn't been cured.

[BusHunter]

Around the peak rush it might because there will be bus packs which is what happens with the artics but now it will be magnified with more 40 footers. Of course cta has found it can save money on mid route pullins but then they sacrifice the ridership of that route like for instance belmont can be 10-15 minutes post 500pm past harlem. Same across the system. A few disgruntled riders lead to ridership declines we dont need a scientist to know that. Lol!!

[Master58]

6 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Kedzie's 4300s were already replaced by 4000's traded from north park.  North park got the 4300's from kedzie in the same fashion they did from Chicago and 77th through a few weekend trades of 4000's for 4300's.  Then when artics came off 79th,  4176-4192 went from 77th to 103rd, while 4193-4207 went to kedzie which basically resulted in a net increase for both

Actually it was 4177-4192 that went to 103rd,  4176 was already at 103rd.

[TaylorTank1229]

Has anyone heard anything about the 2016-2017 Bus/Train Winter updates yet?

[jajuan]

18 minutes ago, TaylorTank1229 said:

Has anyone heard anything about the 2016-2017 Bus/Train Winter updates yet?

It's still a little too early. Our operators on the forum like Andre usually have info around the 10th of December for significant route changes. The biggest info we really have is that the 66 and therefore Chicago garage may be losing artics.

[jajuan]

7 hours ago, Sam92 said:

Kedzie's 4300s were already replaced by 4000's traded from north park.  North park got the 4300's from kedzie in the same fashion they did from Chicago and 77th through a few weekend trades of 4000's for 4300's.  Then when artics came off 79th,  4176-4192 went from 77th to 103rd, while 4193-4207 went to kedzie which basically resulted in a net increase for both

True but they concentrated on hitting 77th and Chicago first. Kedzie still had 4300s at the time which were mainly the hybrid 4300s. North Park got what remained of 4300s at Kedzie except 4326 and 4327 the weekend that Kedzie got 4193-4207 from 77th. A few months behind that 4326 and 4327 made their way to 103rd. At some point, 4193-97 went to 103rd to replace a few additional artics that went from 103rd to Chicago.  If you remember it was you who blasted CTA for Kedzie having more artics than 103rd prior to the artics getting purged from 77th. 

[Sam92]

5 hours ago, jajuan said:

True but they concentrated on hitting 77th and Chicago first. Kedzie still had 4300s at the time which were mainly the hybrid 4300s. North Park got what remained of 4300s at Kedzie except 4326 and 4327 the weekend that Kedzie got 4193-4207 from 77th. A few months behind that 4326 and 4327 made their way to 103rd. At some point, 4193-97 went to 103rd to replace a few additional artics that went from 103rd to Chicago.  If you remember it was you who blasted CTA for Kedzie having more artics than 103rd prior to the artics getting purged from 77th. 

I remember that discussion but I was actually blasting cta for 103rd and 77th for being the main garages chipping 20-30 artics each to make Chicago an artic garage while NP and K only gave like 2 or 3 a piece when it shoulda been the other way around cause even with apparent delays caused by artics, some of the North Lake Shore Drive Express routes on inner drive go through some pretty tight streets compared to the south side and add the fact that some genius decided to locate bus stops on bumpOuts along that stretch pretty much meaning the bus has to block a single lane street to board;  135, 136, 146, 148 all run through that area on 3-4 min frequencies each so thats gotta be a bit worse than 79th so I still feel like if they can make it work up north with that situation along with Clark and Sheridan then they should be able to make it work on 2, 3, 4, 79 and 87 on the south side along with chicago.  They're stuck with 308 artics until retirement  age regardless and like I said earlier if you put more at 103rd then youre basically giving them the number it took to support R95, R55/R63, and the extra artics on 29 which aren't needed anymore and so the only other choice to possibly make use of them there would be to hand over the #2, #3 and #4. Or the obvious needed thing to do is start thinking outside the box and thinking further ahead and getting creative. Find a way to make artics work on the south side like they're doing on the north If they insist on keeping them on the locals up there cause if anyone wants to throw on the fact that 22 and 151 have the ridership to justify artics the 77th's main routes qualify since they are in the top 10 a lot with 79th remaining #2 highest in the system. Maybe the solution would be to throw enough artics to thin crowds instead of all artics 24/7 as was done on 79th. Spread them to other routes like was done at first 

[jajuan]

19 minutes ago, Sam92 said:

I remember that discussion but I was actually blasting cta for 103rd and 77th for being the main garages chipping 20-30 artics each to make Chicago an artic garage while NP and K only gave like 2 or 3 a piece when it shoulda been the other way around cause even with apparent delays caused by artics, some of the North Lake Shore Drive Express routes on inner drive go through some pretty tight streets compared to the south side and add the fact that some genius decided to locate bus stops on bumpOuts along that stretch pretty much meaning the bus has to block a single lane street to board;  135, 136, 146, 148 all run through that area on 3-4 min frequencies each so thats gotta be a bit worse than 79th so I still feel like if they can make it work up north with that situation along with Clark and Sheridan then they should be able to make it work on 2, 3, 4, 79 and 87 on the south side along with chicago.  They're stuck with 308 artics until retirement  age regardless and like I said earlier if you put more at 103rd then youre basically giving them the number it took to support R95, R55/R63, and the extra artics on 29 which aren't needed anymore and so the only other choice to possibly make use of them there would be to hand over the #2, #3 and #4. Or the obvious needed thing to do is start thinking outside the box and thinking further ahead and getting creative. Find a way to make artics work on the south side like they're doing on the north If they insist on keeping them on the locals up there cause if anyone wants to throw on the fact that 22 and 151 have the ridership to justify artics the 77th's main routes qualify since they are in the top 10 a lot with 79th remaining #2 highest in the system. 

I agree with you that if they're not going to keep artics at Chicago Garage that they would be better served through the south side, but as it seems like we're coming to agreement, through 77th not 103rd. There's no way 103rd needs to be at the artic numbers they were during the time of the Red Line South replacement shuttles as you just noted. So whichever managers at 77th that doesn't like that garage having artics is just going to get over it. Kedzie doesn't need more because the routes it uses them on are well covered. Besides that it doesn't have the capacity. That's why it's been giving up full routes and some runs on some others to Chicago in the last couple of years. North Park sure as heck doesn't need any more because it's already at 130 roughly. FG and 74th don't have the maintenance lifts for 60 foot artics due to geniuses working at CTA not grasping that 55 foot artics weren't really being built anymore with MAN leaving the States. Heck even the artics it made for Seattle and bought second hand to shore things up until the NABI 7500s were available happened to be 60 feet long. So the only logical choice really is 77th. 

[Busjack]

4 hours ago, jajuan said:

So the only logical choice really is 77th. 

Even if 79th (roughly Halsted to Stony Island) is to narrow to handle it, 3 (at least north of 79th) and 4 (full route) should be able to. I suppose moving 6 back to 77th is a wash.

[jajuan]

2 hours ago, Busjack said:

Even if 79th (roughly Halsted to Stony Island) is to narrow to handle it, 3 (at least north of 79th) and 4 (full route) should be able to. I suppose moving 6 back to 77th is a wash.

Yeah from what I know of the 4 from visiting a friend that used to live along the route, the only tight spots to worry about in terms of roadways narrow for artics are the portion along 35th and along Cottage south of 35th to about 47th. 

[andrethebusman]

Problem is not traffic but dwell times (loading/unloading). Routes like 147, 146 have relatively short "local" sections compared to say79 or 66. If you want to run artics on a long local route, you need to have a VERY slow schedule, little fastet than walking spees, to stay on time. By that point you need just as many artics as you had standard buses to have same interval, so you heven't accomplished anything. City after city has figured this out and only run their artics on express routes.

[jajuan]

3 hours ago, andrethebusman said:

Problem is not traffic but dwell times (loading/unloading). Routes like 147, 146 have relatively short "local" sections compared to say79 or 66. If you want to run artics on a long local route, you need to have a VERY slow schedule, little fastet than walking spees, to stay on time. By that point you need just as many artics as you had standard buses to have same interval, so you heven't accomplished anything. City after city has figured this out and only run their artics on express routes.

Well not all cities. New York, San Francisco and Philly for example also run artics on busy local routes just as Chicago does.  New York and San Francisco have the advantage of three door artics though.

[andrethebusman]

New York, especially in Manhattan, has bus stops much more widely spaced than Chicago. Also, artics are used in many cases on "SelectBus" versions of routes, which are limited stop versions like the old Archer Express. SF also has wider stop spacing than our normal 8 a mile.

The long dwell times are for several reasons:

1/ Artic rear doors are full air doors, even though they are "passenger activated" and as such have a sugnificant lag opening and closing. Only a few seconds each time, but with frequent stops it adds up.

2/ Normally you schedule fewer buses per hour when you schedule artics. This means more boarding and alighting per bus per stop. Again, only a few seconds per stop, but again it adds up.

3/ Say what you will, an artic being heavier than a standard bus is slower accelerating. Take it from somebody who drove both kinds regularly. Them there artics is piggy.

Add all three and an 8 stops per mile route and you have yourself a slow proceeding. This is why most examples of artics on regular local routes is based on the route having so much riding that otherwise you would need very close headways, so in order to keep the operating costs down, you accept the pokiness and delays. Clark is a good example. During the day it is almost all 40-footers, evenings and weekends artics as otherwise you would need a couple of minite headway those times. Costs do have a way of trumping convenience.

[andrethebusman]

5 hours ago, jajuan said:

Well not all cities. New York, San Francisco and Philly for example also run artics on busy local routes just as Chicago does.  New York and San Francisco have the advantage of three door artics though.

In Philadelphia, center city congestion (especially on north-south streets) is approaching immobility. At that point, speed and dwell times no longer matter. Fewer buses per hour would be considered a plus as this means fewer vehicles squeezing down the street. 

[andrethebusman]

On 12/3/2016 at 2:03 PM, TaylorTank1229 said:

Has anyone heard anything about the 2016-2017 Bus/Train Winter updates yet?

Only very minor stuff (affecting 1 or 2 rush trips added or deleted) exceot changing 66 to 40-footers and 43 starting 90 min later Sat and 2 hrs earlier Sun.