Comments on: AATA Continues Push for Master Plan Input

By: Chris White

Chris White — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:54:41 +0000

I am AATA Manager of Service Development, and I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. The GPS on each bus provides continuous schedule adherence data; the driver is not involved. It records the precise time – to the second – that each bus arrives at each timepoint. On-time is defined at the scheduled time to 5 minutes after the scheduled time. There will always be some variation in arrival time, and the five-minute spread for being considered on-time is pretty standard in transit in the U.S.

We regularly pay attention to on-time performance, and have taken steps in the last couple years which has improved it overall. In the January – March 2010 quarter, on-time performance was 90% for all timepoints, and 95% of trips were completed on-time. In the July – September 2010 quarter, it was significantly worse as described at the Board meeting and in the article above. It has improved lately, but we are looking at other changes to increase reliability.

By: Peter Zetlin

Peter Zetlin — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:20:31 +0000

Buses also run early. If that happens, and you miss the bus on my route, you have to wait a half hour for the next one.

While it would be wonderful to improve county-wide transit, it is discouraging to see AATA spending so much money to promote itself as a county-wide solution prior to working out the required funding. AATA also is going to build a new transit center. The current Blake Transit Center works well enough for now.

It’s going to be difficult to finance both public transportation and automobiles at the same time. The city is spending so much on parking garages that the message to me is that cars are going to continue to get a large share of our resources. For now, it’s hard to imagine voters supporting additional subsidies for both cars and buses.

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 01:45:19 +0000

I would love to know how ontime performance is determined. I regularly ride the #5 Packard route and it is routinely at least 5 minutes late.

By: cosmonıcan

cosmonıcan — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:41:29 +0000

RE #3: Why wouldn’t the “end of route” be governed by the same GPS that announces stops?
Does the driver really control it?

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:19:49 +0000

I know someone who won’t ride AATA because if their first bus runs a bit late or if the 2nd bus they need to transfer to runs early, they miss the transfer and end up wasting a lot of time. Missing a transfer is not acceptable if you need to get to work on-time.

By: Dan Madaj

Dan Madaj — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 10:37:18 +0000

“End of the route” itself has a variable interpretation. Sometimes on the morning 12A the bus driver pushes/pulls her/his “end of route” button/lever while still some distance (and minutes) from BTC. I assume that’s to “improve” on-time performance . . . .

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 19:24:14 +0000

Re: [1] A year and a half ago there was discussion of the software programming that measures on-time performance — it had been temporarily incorrectly configured at 9 minutes, when the it should have been set to 5 minutes. Based on that, the standard for on-time is no more than 5 minutes late. [That's measured at the end of the route.]

By: Joel Batterman

Joel Batterman — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 16:57:42 +0000

How does AATA define “on-time” performance?

While 83% clearly leaves room for improvement, it would be interesting to know how this figure compares to the performance of peer agencies, and especially to metro Detroit’s DDOT and SMART bus systems.