Have you ever looked at a bus timetable and thought, “Geez, that looks complicated”? You’re not wrong. A bus schedule contains a lot of information. But every line, timepoint, and column is carefully designed to help you plan your trip by time and location. Here’s a look at what goes into building one.
Creating a bus schedule is about far more than timing how long it takes to drive a route. Yes, driving the route provides a baseline. But that’s just the beginning. Schedulers also have to add time spent at bus stops (how long it takes for passengers to board/disembark), figuring that some stops will be busier than others, and at different times of the day. And don’t forget red lights, left turns, and stop signs!
Then there’s traffic congestion, which can vary throughout the day both in location and direction. For example, during the morning rush hour, traffic backs up going westbound on Ygnacio Valley Road, but in the evening, it backs up going eastbound, and not always on the same stretch of road. There’s also heavier traffic in both directions around lunchtime, but not in all the same places as during rush hour. And don’t forget about schools! Traffic backs up at the beginning and end of the school day because of parents dropping off their kids, and kids using the crosswalk (which means longer and more frequent red lights). And of course, everything changes when school is out for the summer or on spring break (and not every school has the same schedule!). Add holiday shoppers (traffic around Sunvalley Shopping Center, for example), road construction, weather, and weekend traffic patterns, and the variables multiply quickly.
The reality is that travel times are never exactly the same twice. For that reason, schedulers have to add additional time, or “padding” to account for this. Padding is extra time built into a schedule that helps even out the variations in traffic or other delays that the bus might experience along its route.
County Connection’s individual bus routes all come together to form a regional network, so we also need to plan our schedules to accommodate transfers between different routes, not to mention BART. It’s common for us to “pulse” at our major terminals, meaning several buses arrive and depart around the same time to make transfers easier. But synchronizing routes can be challenging when some take longer to operate or run more frequently than others.
And last but certainly not least, we have to think of our bus operators. The bus is their workplace, their office, so to speak, but it doesn’t include a restroom or a lunchroom. So, we have to build time into our schedules for our operators to take their breaks and to access the restroom. And the time it takes to walk from the bus stop to the restroom can vary a lot – looking at you, Dublin/Pleasanton BART station!
You can think of a bus schedule as a giant algebra equation with a million variables, where solving for X means the bus arrives on time. Yet it’s something we do for each of our 53 routes, updated four times a year! If we’ve done our job right — if all those variables have been factored in and the math adds up — then your trip should feel predictable, reliable, and maybe even a little bit easy. You just show up, check the time, and go. Behind the scenes, we’ll keep solving for X so you can focus on getting where you need to be.
Andrew Smith is the Director of Planning & Marketing. Do you have question about County Connection? About our buses? About our routes and service? Email asmith@cccta.org and your question might be included in a future issue of our monthly newsletter, Headways.