How Flexible Should Bus Service Be? Frequent Networks As a Tool For Permanent Change

Abstract

Buses are often hailed for their "flexibility" as a transport mode, compared to rail-based technologies. Many cities, though, need certainty about where high-quality services will be in the long term, so that they can guide both land use and road design in harmony with them. Bus Rapid Transit is an obvious example of "bus service made permanent." The infrastructure of BRT represents a fixed government investment in service in a certain place, which in turn provides the certainty that other city actors need as they decide how to grow the city, and whether they can rely on the permanence of the service as they do so. This paper asks: Can we seek similar permanence for frequent local-stop bus lines? A generation of North American land use planners and urbanists has decided that when it comes to local-stop services, trams matter and buses do not. But people make location decisions based on the mobility offered by public transport, so there is at least theoretical reason to believe that we would get better long-term patronage (and urbanist) outcomes if we fixed our best local bus services far in advance. The paper reviews current practice in “Frequent Network” strategies and branding to this end.