AC Transit Bus at the Transbay Temporary Terminal in San Francisco
If you haven’t heard of Next Bus, go check out their homepage! Contracting with multiple transit agencies and universities (UC Berkeley, MIT, AC Transit, LA Metro, WMATA, New Jersey Transit to name a few), Next Bus provides transit users real time information regarding arrival times. They have both a website and an app that uses GPS data to detect the proximity of a specific bus to a particular bus stop. This is a big help, as commuters can utilize the most out of their time, like shopping or reading a book at a local cafe, instead of waiting at a bus stop for 15 to 20 minutes so they will not miss their ride. The system is not perfect (too often have I waited more than 7 minutes for a bus “2 minutes” away), but is definitely more reliable than the paper schedules at bus stops and much more comfortable than waiting 10 minutes in the cold.
While I would like to talk about Next Bus’s operations everywhere, due to my study and homework demands, I’ll unfortunately have to limit this post to just AC Transit, more specifically AC Transit’s operations in the UC/Downtown Berkeley area.
AC Transit (Alameda County Transit) is the local transit agency for the East Bay. From the ashes of the old Key System, it now spans from Richmond in the north to Fremont in the south, and has several transbay bus lines to San Francisco and the Peninsula. With a bus-only fleet, it has two rapid lines, an upcoming BRT line, and dozen or so hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. With a ridership of around 200,000 daily passengers (2009-2010), AC Transit provides transit serve to and fro the many BART rail stations within its jurisdiction.
Currently, according to their website, “AC Transit currently contracts with Nextbus to generate bus arrival predictions for display on the 511 system, at AC Transit kiosks, text-based signs in bus shelters and on AC Transit’s website” (source). The agency, as listed, uses two types of hardware to display Next Bus real-time information to commuters in public: 1) kiosks and 2) text-based signs.
Kiosks (top image) use one screen to display arrival times for buses of many lines. It reminds me somewhat of those airport arrival time screens found in terminals. Multiple future buses for each line are usually shown on kiosks, so if one cannot make the bus coming in 2 minutes, at least he/she knows that more are arriving in 5, 12, and 20 minutes.
Text-based signs (bottom image) are located on the inside corner of the bus station ceiling. A bus line would flash along with arrival times of its 2 closest buses (e.g. 52: 3 min & 19 min). Each line would usually be visible for 2 or 3 seconds before the sign shows information regarding another line.
Kiosks are more efficient than text-based signs in relaying information to diverse commuters, meaning a crowd of people taking different routes. A bus stop that serves many lines (>3) would benefit from a kiosk as one glance can reveal the necessary information needed. Conversely, if a text-based sign is used instead, people would have to wait for their particular line to be displayed on the screen. Imagine having to wait for 5 pieces of unhelpful information appear and disappear before your bus line shows up on the screen. Serious congestion can build up at bus stops by people watching the sign who may not even take the next arriving bus.
Of course, the text-based signs do have an important advantage, one that is crucial for transit agencies: cost. From the photos above, it can be easily inferred that a kiosk cost much more than a text-based sign. While actual expenditures on these pieces of hardware have not been identified, those large monitor-like screens on metallic supports are probably more expensive than those simple LCD signs attached to the station wall. It is most likely due to the cost that these text-based signs can be found in many stations along rapid bus routes, but only a few kiosks can be spotted (near the Downtown Berkeley and Fruitvale BART stations and the Transbay Temporary Terminal in San Francisco).
Now that the general background of these Next Bus signs have been described, I will now introduce the UC Berkeley area with a satellite view from Google Earth (click to zoom):
UC Berkeley’s campus is quite evident with its large park lawns, beginning from the center of the image and spreading into the foothills on the right. To the left of the university is Downtown Berkeley with its BART station. The city, despite being a suburb of San Francisco, is actually quite urban and pedestrian-friendly (and recently, bike-friendly). It was one of the region’s early suburbs and developed as streetcar lines spread further from Oakland and San Francisco. Businesses, with their light-colored roofs can be seen clustering and lining Berkeley’s streets near the campus: Shattuck, University, and Telegraph to name a few.
I thought it would be easier if I made a rudimentary map for people not familiar to the area:
With high density, student population, and environmental awareness, Berkeley is perfect for public transportation. Besides the BART system, in which Berkeley has THREE stations (a number many larger cities envy), many people use AC Transit. There are too many bus lines that travel through Downtown, so I decided to just focus on those that touch the UC Berkeley campus. Students commonly use buses as trips are “free.” UC Berkeley contracts with AC Transit to purchase these student bus stickers that are extremely discounted and are paid for by student fees. Anyways, a rundown of the lines (each line is a hyperlink to the official line map for those curious):
1, 1R: Downtown Berkeley, Telegraph, Downtown Oakland, Oakland Chinatown, Fruitvale, and San Leandro. The 1R is a rapid bus line with limited stops.
49 A & B: Downtown Berkeley, Telegraph, Claremont, Rockridge, Ashby, West Berkeley. 49A travels clockwise, while the 49B travels counter-clockwise. The 49 A & B lines are used heavily by those students living in the Ashby area.
51B: Berkeley Marina, University, Downtown Berkeley, Telegraph, College, Rockridge. This is probably the most ridden bus by students as it connects many student housing (dorms and apartments) with two BART stations, grocery stores, restaurants, and recreational areas.
52: UC Village, Hearst, University, North Side, Telegraph, Downtown Berkeley. Students who live at the UC Village, an enormous family housing complex for professors and students with families, use this bus as it is essentially the only convenient method of travel to classes.
F: Hearst, Telegraph, Downtown Berkeley, Shattuck, Emeryville, San Francisco. This bus is commonly used on the weekends, as it gives students access to big box stores like Target and Best Buy, as well as malls and movie theaters in Emeryville and San Francisco.
The black dots represent bus stops around the campus. They are given numbers for easy reference. Some have the letters A & B; this simply denotes that they are two halves, as one stop serves bus lines westbound, and the other serves routes eastbound. Once again, these are only SOME of the bus lines in the area (but all the ones that run near the campus). The paper AC Transit map I used as a reference was really hard to read – Downtown Berkeley was saturated with a rainbow of bus lines!
As mentioned above, AC Transit currently has installed several hardware pieces around the BART station and in bus shelters to provide real-time data to people waiting at bus lines. These installations have been well received by students, even to those with smartphones, as they deliver information quicker than if one were to pull a phone out of a pocket and load the app. They are so popular that many candidates of ASUC, the umbrella student government that manages student organizations, have vowed in their election platforms to install them in bus stops all around Berkeley campus. Of course, with public money tight, it is not a realistic short-term goal. After all, it has been more than two years since I heard these statements in my freshman year, and there has been no apparent progress in expanding installation.
However, if Next Bus and AC Transit were to place 2 or 3 additional pieces of hardware, where should they go?
More in Part II as I analyze the potential of each bus stop!
Thanks for reading!
More info on Next Bus can be found here. More info on AC Transit’s real-time information can be found here.
The Yellow Line 