Bus Stop Balancing Project
Pierce Transit is conducting a “Bus Stop Balancing” project. The goal of this project is to speed up trips on Pierce Transit bus rides. We’re doing that by conducting a thorough examination of each bus stop and consolidating, removing or relocating stops, based on specific criteria, at the Sept. 19, 2021, service change. The project also aims to increase safety, ensure buses are running on time, increase ridership and potentially give us the opportunity to add more service hours with the cost savings.
Read below for more information about the project or visit this Bus Stop Balancing Feedback tool to easily locate your bus stop(s) and provide feedback. If you need assistance completing the survey in another language, please call Pierce Transit Customer Service at 253.581.8000 (option 1, then option 1 again).
For closed captioning in other languages, Click the “YouTube” icon to watch video on YouTube, then click the “CC” icon to turn on closed captioning. Select “Subtitles” and “Autotranslate” to select your language.
Why balance bus stops?
When bus stops are too close together, it slows an entire transit system down. That can negatively impact ridership, as one of the primary reasons people don’t ride transit is because it can take longer to reach their destination.
It is typical for transit agencies to add more and more stops over the years based on constituent requests, new destinations and for other reasons. The more stops a bus has to make, the more time it has to spend:
- Pulling in and out of traffic
- Dropping off and picking up passengers
- Waiting while passengers pay their fare and get seated
- Getting caught at red lights
Every so often it is important for a transit agency to take a comprehensive look at all its bus stop locations and balance them to ensure stops are not too far apart, but also not so close that the entire system is slowing down. Looking at stops comprehensively from a safety perspective and through other lenses is also important.
How were stops identified for potential removal?
Guidelines suggest that bus stops should be no closer than 1/8 mile in dense urban areas, and no closer than 1/4 mile in other areas. One-quarter mile is about four blocks, or a 5 to 7-minute walk from stop to stop. This walking time is cut in half when someone is starting between the two stops. On many Pierce Transit routes, stops are much closer together than these guidelines suggest. On one route, for example, we have 21 bus stops within just over 1 mile.
Over the past several months, a team of Pierce Transit employees has conducted a thorough review of all 2,100+ bus stops in Pierce Transit’s system. They examined them through the lenses of:
- Safety, including pedestrian facilities, lighting and security, visibility, intersection traffic control and topography
- Accessibility for riders with mobility challenges
- Equity
- Proximity to other stops
- Ridership at that stop relative to adjacent stops
- Key transfer points and major destinations nearby (e.g., hospitals, shopping, schools, etc.)
- Investments in each stop (shelter, concrete pads, lighting, etc.) and cost of repairs
Following this work the team identified stops throughout the system for potential removal with the Sept. 19, 2021 service update.
How can customers and the community offer their input?
Pierce Transit is posting signs at each stop identified for potential removal and asking riders and community members for their feedback by:
- Calling Pierce Transit Customer Services at 253.581.8000 (option 1, then option 1 again), or
- Visiting PierceTransit.org/busstops (this webpage) and using the feedback tool
The signs will also identify nearby alternative stops for that route. The feedback period will last about a month, from March 9 through April 11, 2021.
What happens next?
Once Pierce Transit makes final decisions about which stops it will remove in September, we will post signs at each stop letting riders know whether the decision was made to remove that stop or not.
The agency will conduct another large public communications campaign before the identified stops are removed Sept. 19.