MBTA Bus Idiocy
Today’s post is a cautionary tale for usability testing. The MBTA in Boston has been in the process of upgrading the entire T infrastructure to support automated fare collection, in the form of Charlie Tickets. The stated goal of these upgrades, including the new fare boxes being installed on buses, is to provide faster and simpler service. Public transportation is hard enough without slow boarding times. Unfortunately, the current impact of the new fare boxes (pdf) is the exact opposite of the goal: it makes boarding slower.
The old fare collection box allowed monthly pass holders to quickly swipe their card and board, taking less than half a second. The new box treats bus passes as Charlie Tickets which means they need to be inserted, read and then returned. This takes at least one second, maybe two. This means that during rush hour and at crowded stops, it will take at least twice as long to board all the passengers. I don’t take the T (subway) regularly but it may be a problem in subway stations as well. Bus drivers have noticed that this rapidly becomes ridiculous and have begun simply waving through monthly pass holders without requiring that the pass be read by the machine. I hope they weren’t relying on the fare box to measure ridership.
For the occasional rider, the new fare collection boxes only accept one coin at a time. The bus fare today is 90 cents. This takes at least five coins. The old boxes had a little funnel that would let them fall in without waiting for people to meticulously insert the coins. Now you have to carefully insert coins one at a time. Clever, no?
The main benefit today of the new boxes is their automated bill ingesters which makes it easier on the bus drivers who previously had special “stuffing” implements to jam folded up dollar bills into a tiny little slot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really make up for the delays in getting people on the bus.
This latest upgrade only compounds idiocy related to new buses that the MBTA has acquired and deployed on popular routes. Never mind that their brakes still squeal; the seat layout of these new buses is simply awful. The best way to see why the new layout sucks is to compare it the old one with regards to how well it allows passenger to board the bus. The old buses (some still in use today) consist of a single-level reached by climbing a few steps from the curb. There is a section of facing seats followed by a section of forward facing seats and then a section of seats arranged in a U at the back of the bus. The middle seats are two columns: a single seat separated from a double seat by a wide corridor.
The new buses are bi-level. The boarding area and front two-thirds of the bus are on-level with the curb (up to the rear door). The rear third is up several steps. The first set of seats is about the same, but the bulk of the seats are now all forward facing, forming two columns of double seats separated by a narrow corridor.
When the bus is crowded, say at rush hour, there are two problems. First, the corridor up the middle of the bus is so narrow that it is difficult to squeeze past people with their backpacks, shopping bags, and baby strollers. People stand near their friends, near the rear door and clog up the front of the buss. This is exacerbated by the second problem: the steps in the middle of the bus act as a major disincentive to go to the standing/seating area in the elevated rear third of the bus. The result? The front of the bus is densely and uncomfortably packed while the rear is relatively empty.
There’s perhaps hope that when the Charlie Card becomes available in 2007 it will go back to allowing regular commuters fast and efficient boarding. That is what some Charlie supporters noted in response to a similar article on Bad Transit. Unfortunately, I suspect the buses will be around a lot longer. The MBTA ought to hire usability experts and run usability tests before approving bus (and subway) changes. It’s probably cheaper in the long run than upsetting and losing customers.
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November 9th, 2006 at 11:50 am
I agree with most of your article–the new farebox are slow and at least double the loading time. Plus, half the time you have to jam your monthly pass in there. However as far as the layout of the bus, I’d like to add that the notion of “disincentive” to go the elevated area in the back of the is a direct product of sheer laziness. And I have a concise, historic reason why people should have no problem with ascending those two steps. As someone who has driven buses in the past (now in management) and has always ridden them frequently, one of the biggest problems drivers have had for the longest time both on buses and rapid transit trains, regardless of single-level or divided-level is getting people to move INTO the vehicle. People, if they know they’re not getting a seat, love to cluster right around the doorways–if people did what they were supposed to do and move all the way in and all the way back, you could get as much as TWICE the amount on. Yes, there are two factors to take into account: 1. If you’re getting off shortly, you don’t want to bury yourself, especially during rush hour. Fine then–step aside and let other people move on in. But too many people will block nearly the entire aisle, thus not letting anyone get by them without a nudge here and a jab there–which few will do–and wind up burying themselves in a cluster anyway right by the door; meanwhile whole sections of the bus are empty because few can get to them. 2. Nobody LOVES overcrowding in public transit. To that end I say, take a vaca to New York, board a NYC Transit bus or subway train during rush hour for a week, just one week, and then come back and we’ll see if you think ANY MBTA transit is crowded. That being said, the steps in the rear of the new buses create further “disincentive” to move in and back up to the elevated area since you actually have to gasp not only waddle your lazy self out of the doorway, but actually ascend two steps to get to the back area. So why do I think it’s lazy–here’s the kicker: where do those two steps come from, you ask? The newer buses are LOW FLOOR, easy-on, easy-off for wheelchairs (and other elderly/disable patrons who have trouble ascending/descending stairs). The older buses aren’t. The heigh in the back is the height we’ve all been used to riding older buses–THE SAME TWO STEPS you walk up to walk into an older bus. So why the height difference in the new buses–to maintain the usuable space around the wheel wells in the rear that the older buses have–usable space that should be USED, might I add. Notice in new buses in the front how, because the buses area lower, you can’t sit or stand in that area.
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful comments!
I can empathize with the fact that people are lazy and really ought to move to the back of the bus. That being said, I still think that if the design or layout of the bus does not account for that laziness (by making it even harder to get to the back), the bus is flawed. Why make things harder on drivers by putting in an additional obstacle for lazy people? We can’t change people. But maybe you can change the buses?