Return of the 11 & 31 Bus

[Sam92]

On 7/18/2017 at 7:00 PM, jajuan said:

I know. I just fleshed it out some for those who  might have been kids at that time or just recently moved to Chicago. It did essentially come back full circle since now all they have really is 146 again. 135 also if they want to count rush hour for any of those in the highrises going to Wacker or La Salle, which they also had in that 2003-2005 stretch but didn't want to count.

You know I just thought about it cause I was randomly leafing through those records,  what if the precense of artics along route 146 now compared to the first attempt to cut 145 in that area had an affect on customers  panicking about only 146 being there? Seems like the second time the complaint was more from residents along wilson

[Busjack]

8 hours ago, Juniorz said:

Let's stick to facts, 90 days and either the 11 is in or out.

Based on the evidence, the agency has the numbers to either keep piloting or consider their loses.

It is what it is, no need to justify the case anymore. 

In September, the fate of the 11 will be decided.

You found something, but note that the last paragraph has exactly the same language as other press releases: "extend, modify, or conclude..." NOT 'final" or "fate decided." Read what you post.

[Juniorz]

We'll see in September who reads what "they post........until then, continue to support the pilots....

[Busjack]

25 minutes ago, Juniorz said:

We'll see in September who reads what "they post

Not to prolong this, but that can be determined immediately.

[Juniorz]

48 minutes ago, Busjack said:

Not to prolong this, but that can be determined immediately.

Exactly! Good Day....

[Busjack]

Tribune story that 11 bites it Sept.1.

[geneking7320]

I see the #31 will be extended to March 2018. I'm surprised it didn't go to the 31st Street Beach during the summer though.

[Juniorz]

Well, I am shocked but unfortunately not surprised by the elimination of the #11 pilot.

The pilot that was supposed to be the shoe-in has now become the disappointment.

[Fails the Turing Test]

Conversely, I'm still consistently amazed that the 31 is apparently close enough to meeting ridership expectations to keep getting renewed. I've ridden it a handful of times, on days I've taken off work to bring my cat to the vet (who is at 31st/Indiana), and it's been pretty deserted each time. Most recently, the bus was empty when I boarded, and it was empty when I alighted, with maybe four other riders in between. Its large headways and crappy hours make it unattractive for nearly anything other than exactly what I used it for: Making appointments, when you can plan everything around a schedule and it's likely to be in the middle of the day anyway. If headways and hours were improved, it could gain a lot more uses like feeding the Red and Green Lines from both Bridgeport and Lake Meadows, serving IIT commuters, serving Maria's and all the restaurants along 31st, and running errands (given the wealth of stores along the route, compared to nearby alternatives like the 35).

In many ways, the 31 is kind of the opposite of the Wallace portion of the 44. The 44 has decent headways and hours, but there's a serious lack of destinations apart from the Orange Line. I've often wondered what ridership on the 44 would look like if, after arriving at the Orange Line, it continued back to Canal all the way to Union Station. That's a direct link to a bunch of South Loop shopping, multiple grocery stores, the West Loop, and two major commuter stations. And there's not much on Canal between Archer and Roosevelt, so it'd likely be a pretty quick trip, too.

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Fails the Turing Test said:

Its large headways and crappy hours

The Tribune article shows what is the problem. Someone complained about the 11 hours, to which the response was that if they were extended, the projection was that it would have at most 1000 riders, when the pilot itself needed 1500 to succeed. Thus,it would have needed maybe 2200 riders to pilot 6 am to 9 pm.

According to the March 2017 ridership report, 31 has an average daily ridership of 581 in March and a 3 month total of 38,444 (which averages out to 584). However, CTA hasn't said what the goal is. The goal is undoubtedly lower than 11, as the 31 schedule requires 2 buses, while the 11 extension required 6. If that (1/3 of the resources) establishes the standard, 31 is meeting it. 31 already has more average daily ridership than the 11 extension ever had.

[Juniorz]

The targeted daily ridership for the #31 is 830 riders and is meeting 75% of it's projected ridership target.

As to where the # 11 extension was hoovering around 500 riders out of the projected 1,500 riders were needed to make the route feasible to continue.

Since the #11 return back in June 2016, seniors have made up the base passenger count, with a few commuters here and there.

Next Up! 

The fate of Route 31 in March 2018.

[jajuan]

Yeah, I'm not too surprised that the 11 extension is biting the dust. It pretty much got to a point of being obvious that the extending of deadlines was pretty much delaying the inevitable. But at least CTA has management that's willing to test out different service resurrections for their plausibility against the current change in any demographics and environment along their routes that may have occurred since being eliminated. Even if the pilots fail, the CTA at least has more updated information it can point to than information that's years and decades out of date when demographic changes are part of the equation, especially rapidly changing ones. The 11 extension did have a higher number of viable destinations that folks may have wanted to go to when looking at the number of shops, restaurants, and other retail businesses along Lincoln compared to 31st Street. However, the 11's extension as structured due to CTA's limited resources couldn't compete with the higher number of folks who just opt for Uber and Lyft especially when most of the folks in the targeted area are on the traditional 9-5 weekday schedule and the extension's service is structured as 9-7 weekday service only on 15-20 minute headways. Extending or resurrecting service on the north side is tricky business compared to the south side because north side residents have more travel options already both from within the CTA itself and outside the CTA compared to those on the south side.

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Juniorz said:

Since the #11 return back in June 2016, seniors have made up the base passenger count, with a few commuters here and there

At the time it was canned, the complaints were from seniors and the sheltered workshop community, mostly that they couldn't climb the stairs to the L or would have to take paratransit. There apparently were not enough of them, and the marketing was aimed at yuppies, and that doesn't seemed to have worked, perhaps for reasons @jajuan.stated.

[Busjack]

1 hour ago, Juniorz said:

The targeted daily ridership for the #31 is 830 riders and is meeting 75% of it's projected ridership target.

I get 70% but still much better than 11's 33%, and, as they say, still have to test summer.

[Juniorz]

1 hour ago, jajuan said:

Yeah, I'm not too surprised that the 11 extension is biting the dust. It pretty much got to a point of being obvious that the extending of deadlines was pretty much delaying the inevitable. But at least CTA has management that's willing to test out different service resurrections for their plausibility against the current change in any demographics and environment along their routes that may have occurred since being eliminated. Even if the pilots fail, the CTA at least has more updated information it can point to than information that's years and decades out of date when demographic changes are part of the equation, especially rapidly changing ones. The 11 extension did have a higher number of viable destinations that folks may have wanted to go to when looking at the number of shops, restaurants, and other retail businesses along Lincoln compared to 31st Street. However, the 11's extension as structured due to CTA's limited resources couldn't compete with the higher number of folks who just opt for Uber and Lyft especially when most of the folks in the targeted area are on the traditional 9-5 weekday schedule and the extension's service is structured as 9-7 weekday service only on 15-20 minute headways. Extending or resurrecting service on the north side is tricky business compared to the south side because north side residents have more travel options already both from within the CTA itself and outside the CTA compared to those on the south side.

You'd hit right on the nail.....Uber and Lyft

Travel options have definitely changed since the 2012 elimination.

Seems the extension couldn't survive in a 2017 world.

[sw4400]

Biggest mistake was pulling it like they did. The former riders migrated elsewhere, like everyone said. Getting the numbers CTA is wanting of 1,500/day, especially with only a 10a-8p run time between Fullerton and Western, is near impossible. That was the nail in the coffin to #11.

[artthouwill]

To me, the other problem with the 11 was that it connected to nothing.  By that I mean downtown.  Fullerton  is just not a destination.  But seniors would ride downtown.  As a local route only didn't  seem to work unless they  ran Optimas.

[Busjack]

7 hours ago, sw4400 said:

Biggest mistake was pulling it like they did. The former riders migrated elsewhere, like everyone said.

Maybe the real problem was that Claypool pulled one of his egomaniac stunts and wasn't called on it then like he is now with his schools b.s. But maybe he did kill it. To get to @artthouwill's point, it used to be 11 Lincoln Sedgwick. In the 2011 ridership report, Lincoln Sedgwick was averaging 5300/day. Now, the north part of Lincoln is about 1500 and 37 Sedgwick is about 1600, so the middle portion should have also generated the projected 1500 if the ridership came back,but it did not. But I also doubt the seniors going to downtown theory, as they could have transferred to 37 or the L, or Halsted to go to the near west side. and downtown is becoming a college town.

[Juniorz]

Another part of the problem was the promotion. Why promote only the Lincoln portion instead of also including connections to downtown via Route 37 and the Brown Line.

I think if the Sedgwick segment was merged with the Lincoln extension the pilot might have just worked.

[Busjack]

6 minutes ago, Juniorz said:

I think if the Sedgwick segment was merged with the Lincoln extension the pilot might have just worked.

Again, your and @artthouwill's point depends on what market research was done on it. Again, I agree that the marketing was not properly directed, in that it was directed to yuppies. But there must have been some research that led to the conclusion that an all day extension would have resulted in only 1000 riders.

In that the 37 segment was not cut even though it is directly parallel to the Brown/Purple Line, the research must have been that there was enough local passenger traffic in that corridor.As I indicated above, there are about 1600 a day there.

CTA is CTA, but I still think it does enough market research to determine such things as there was a point to extending 4 to 115th, even though that service had not existed for 48 years and some Pullman bus was there.

[BusHunter]

I'd have to agree the hours killed it. So you have a 10 AM start time. Hello... Who rides at 10AM? seniors everyone else is either working or in school. Then you are asking riders to get off a AC #3200 in the PM and get on a bus that run every 20 minutes. The only draw they had, morning rush operation, they blew out of the water. They needed to at least give it AM to PM rush operation. This is why I think the #31 will inevitably fail also. This is just another #39, if you ask me. Somehow in order to make the #31 a success, really they need to route some #35's up archer and link with the #31. Then you have a potential Cicero connection with all the traffic of Cicero and points west to link together. Really then you have a true blue #31. But really double service on west 31st makes no sense. You know from the traffic they have west on 31st, maybe getting rid of the #35's and making them #31's makes sense.

I was going to remark yesterday I noticed they put a #11 sign just west of the "L" at fullerton wb. Kind of strange the old sign under the "L" still exists 20 feet away, so we have the closest stops in history. LOL!!  Remember when we were all talking about why the #11 terminal was at Halsted. It appears it was moved to the "L". (Unless I'm nuts) I think our discussion may have had some effect at hq.

[Busjack]

47 minutes ago, BusHunter said:

They needed to at least give it AM to PM rush operation.

Again are you going to guarantee the 2200-2400 riders needed to support that? Or, since CTA said it would only support 1000, do you have market studies to contest that?

This was never for commuters, who have the L to downtown.

[jajuan]

1 hour ago, BusHunter said:

I'd have to agree the hours killed it. So you have a 10 AM start time. Hello... Who rides at 10AM? seniors everyone else is either working or in school. Then you are asking riders to get off a AC #3200 in the PM and get on a bus that run every 20 minutes. The only draw they had, morning rush operation, they blew out of the water. They needed to at least give it AM to PM rush operation. This is why I think the #31 will inevitably fail also. This is just another #39, if you ask me. Somehow in order to make the #31 a success, really they need to route some #35's up archer and link with the #31. Then you have a potential Cicero connection with all the traffic of Cicero and points west to link together. Really then you have a true blue #31. But really double service on west 31st makes no sense. You know from the traffic they have west on 31st, maybe getting rid of the #35's and making them #31's makes sense.

I was going to remark yesterday I noticed they put a #11 sign just west of the "L" at fullerton wb. Kind of strange the old sign under the "L" still exists 20 feet away, so we have the closest stops in history. LOL!!  Remember when we were all talking about why the #11 terminal was at Halsted. It appears it was moved to the "L". (Unless I'm nuts) I think our discussion may have had some effect at hq.

I wouldn't be so quick to write off the #31 because that one is surprisingly showing growth toward its performance goal at a faster clip than the #11 was hoped to do. Despite those few reports from a few of just a handful being on the bus when they rode on the #31, it is still demonstrably benefiting from IIT students and a few other local passengers other than the main senior target audience. So why wreck service on the #35 running buses on Archer, when the #31 is showing credible progress on its own merits? As for others' questions about why the #31 doesn't go to the beach, anyone who has 31st Beach as their destination aren't going to wait 30 minutes for the #31 when the #35 is still the quicker option even with needing to get off at 33rd/Rhodes and take the short walk over to the beach since the #35 service to 31st Street Beach is weekends/holidays only during the summer season. The #31 works better for the other destinations that those riders are using it for.

[Tcmetro]

I've used the 31 on occasion, ridership looks light but turnover is pretty high. Very few trips are longer than a mile in length. I think AM rush service on the 31 (maybe starting as late as 7 am) could be logical for IIT students. It would be nice to have some later service in the evening, but the other bus lines nearby (35, 39) have pretty light ridership at those hours. I also wonder if turning the east end of the route into a loop via 26th St and 31st St or rerouting to 33rd St could provide better access (although at the expense of simplicity).

[Busjack]

12 minutes ago, Tcmetro said:

I've used the 31 on occasion, ridership looks light but turnover is pretty high.

All that counts is boardings,  so  that's good enough, unless they are usung gps to determine that no one rides east of the Green Line, for instance.

18 minutes ago, Tcmetro said:

I also wonder if turning the east end of the route into a loop via 26th St and 31st St or rerouting to 33rd St could provide better access (although at the expense of simplicity).

At one time, it served Michael Reese and Mercy hospitals, but there isn't any more Michael Reese, and 21 was rerouted to serve Mercy.