An all-door boarding solution

In a time when transit agencies across the U.S. are facing declining bus ridership and tightening budgets, the conversations regarding transit policy need to become increasingly passenger-focused, while potential changes need to be financially justifiable.

New York’s TransitCenter recently asked Steer to assess whether instituting all-door boarding on New York City buses would generate sufficient benefits to passengers and transit providers. Allowing passengers to board at all doors, as opposed to restricting boarding to the front door, has been reported to generate considerable passenger benefits and potentially improve bus operations.

From a passengers’ perspective, all-door boarding has resulted in decreased travel time, improved reliability and increased customer satisfaction in a number of regions worldwide. These are key areas for improvement as transit agencies seek to boost their declining bus ridership numbers. 

On the operational side, there are also benefits from travel time savings. The time savings can be substantial enough to decrease fleet size. Additionally, less variation in dwell times increases service reliability and on-time performance. There are also improvements to driver safety when drivers are not responsible for checking fares, as most driver-passenger incidents reportedly occur over fare disagreements.  

New York City context
The New York transit system is the nation’s largest: Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) New York City Transit (NYCT) manages approximately 8 million trips a day across all five boroughs. Each weekday, MTA buses are used for around 2.4 million of these trips. With the exception of the Select Bus Service (SBS), the majority of local buses require boarding and fare payment at the front door, leading to queuing and extended dwell times at crowded stops. SBS passengers, meanwhile, obtain proof of payment from ticket vending machines at bus stops prior to boarding via all doors. Fare enforcement is managed by the 'Eagle Team' which performs spot checks along routes, rather than the drivers. Unsurprisingly, the MTA reports dwell-time reductions, higher passenger satisfaction, and ridership growth on these routes. 

While transit agencies have all found improvements due to all-door boarding within their region, there is considerable variance, especially with respect to the magnitude of time savings. Given the variability of previous studies, and the likelihood that local conditions strongly influence the benefits, TransitCenter and Steer opted to develop a unique set of data to assess the benefits of all-door boarding specifically in the NYC context. Steer conducted a survey to measure the differences in boarding times between all-door boarding (as on SBS buses) and front-door boarding (as on Local buses), to develop a robust database. This data supported statistical models and quantitative analysis of the benefits of converting all routes to all-door boarding in New York City. 

Concerns with fare evasion
In addition to its touted benefits, a switch to all-door boarding isn’t without its share of concerns. Topping the list, most often, is fare evasion. When passengers are not passing the driver, are passengers more likely to avoid paying fares? On the contrary, several transit agencies have experienced an overall decrease in fare evasion with the switch to all-door boarding. MTA reports less fare evasion on SBS routes, and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency – the first agency in North America to adopt all-door boarding city-wide – reports the same. This is unsurprising considering that many crowded stops can already have an unofficial practice of all-door boarding without the ability to pay at the rear door. The decrease in fare evasion is likely related to alternate fare enforcement strategies employed by agencies in parallel with all-door boarding. Drivers are often reluctant to strongly enforce payment due to safety concerns; the presence of fare enforcement teams can be more effective.

Findings 
While the average time savings per passenger trip, in this study, worked out to less than a minute (about 2% of the average trip time), the savings are significant when aggregated at the route or system level. The annual value of passenger time saved, systemwide, works out to about $70 million a year. Studies have also shown that wait time (which would be reduced by all-door boarding) is perceived as longer than the in-vehicle portion of the trip. Perception is what drives behavior change and ultimately gains transit agencies more riders. From an operational perspective, the time savings may increase bus ridership by 1% or 6.8 million trips annually. This, along with the considerable benefit-cost ratio resulting from relatively modest capital and maintenance cost for equipment and fare enforcement, suggests that a systemwide transition to all-door boarding on buses should be strongly considered. 

MTA is planning to upgrade their current MetroCard payment system in the coming years. By combining upgrades, MTA has an opportunity to take advantage of lower capital costs and cost-effectively implement the technology to facilitate all-door boarding with the advent of a new fare payment system.