Social Equity and Service Improvement in Bus Rapid Transit Route Selection: The Case of New York City Cameron E. Gordon, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Finance University of Canberra (Australia) And John J. Marchi Visiting Research Scholar City University of New York/College of Staten Island
[email protected] Michael E. Kress, Ph.D. Professor of Computer Science The College of Staten Island
[email protected] Jonathan R. Peters, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Finance The College of Staten Island And Research Fellow, University Transportation Research Center – Region II
[email protected]
Words: 4381 Tables: 8 x 250 = 2000 Figures: 4 x 250 = 1000 TOTAL: 7381 LIMIT=7500 DRAFT AUGUST 1 2009
ABSTRACT The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York State is the largest provider of mass transit services in the United States. However much of this system, particularly the fixed transit rail road networks, was built decades ago. Only recently has the MTA begun considering extensions to this network. New Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is currently in the planning and design phase with five new BRT routes proposed as pilots. Using GIS and other analytical techniques the authors examine the demographics of the areas that were potentially served as well as compare as compared to routes that were not selected. We are then able to identify the level of social equity and level of service provided by the routes selected.
1.
INTRODUCTION
Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) offers the potential to provide significant improvements in transportation services for a wide variety of communities around the globe. Yet BRT is only just starting to appear in some major US cities with already rich transit networks. A leading example is New York City which has the highest transit usage rate in the nation,and yet there is currently no BRT in the New York Metropolitan Area. The City of New York completed construction of its system largely by 1940. Demographic and economic change since then has been prodigious, and there are significant pockets of population that are currently underserved by public transit of any sort. For this reason the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) of New York State began considering extensions to the network using Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). This initiative is still in the planning and design phase with five new BRT routes proposed as pilots and currently in early implementation stages. Using GIS and other analytical techniques the authors examine the demographics of the areas that are to be potentially served by these new BRT lines as well as compared to
routes that were not selected. We are then able to identify the level of social equity and service extent provided by the routes selected. 2.
The spatial mismatch of New York City's transit network
New York City is made up of five boroughs (The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island). All boroughs show extremely high levels of mass transit usage and lower auto travel than national averages. However, the four “outer boroughs” (i.e. those outside Manhattan) share in common some of the worst commuting times in the nation. All of the outer boroughs have average mass transit commute time between 1421 minutes longer than the national average. (Manhattan has a lower average commute time by mass transit). Staten Island and Queens in particular have some of the highest rates of “extreme commuters” – commuters with a 90 minute plus commute in the nation – ranked 1st and 3rd in the nation [1]. TABLE 1: 2000 Commuting Patterns [2] Population
USA Bronx Brooklyn 281,421,906 1,332,650 2,465,326
Manhattan 1,537,195
Queens 2,229,379
Staten Island 443,728
Drove Alone – 73.2% Carpool – 13.4% Public Transit – 5.3% Bike or Walk – 4.3% Motorcycle or other - 0.9% Work at Home – 3.0%
27.0% 9.3% 53.7% 7.5% .6% 1.9%
22.5% 8.8% 58.0% 8.6% 0.5% 1.6%
7.6% 3.4% 59.6% 22.8% 0.8% 5.8%
34.3% 10.2% 47.4% 5.9% 0.4% 1.8%
54.3% 12.1% 28.4% 3.1% 0.5% 1.7%
Average Commute Mass Transit Comm. (Minutes)
43.0 54.2
43.2 51.8
30.5 34.4
42.2 54.3
43.9 68.6
25.5 47.7
New York City offers two transit modes: bus and subway. Buses play a key role, especially in areas of the city where the subway network is weak, with over 30% percent of transit ridership being carried by bus [2,3]. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) operates the majority of local service buses (207 routes) and also an extensive network of express buses (38 routes). In 2002, the MTA deployed 4,566 buses over 2,109 route miles in the 303 square miles of New York City. The NYC Transit Bus system carried 762,190,226 riders in 2002. These buses generally operated in the surface traffic flow on local streets. Express buses operate limited stop service
with some sporadic dedicated bus lanes. Table 2 outlines some of the service level by borough and population density [3,4].
Table 2: Density and Service Population Density Per Square Mile – 2002 County
Population
NYC Transit Bus System – 2002
Area Sq Miles
Population
Local
Express
Density
Routes
Buses
Routes
Route Miles
Bronx
1,354,068
42
32,240
40
0
877
255
Brooklyn Manhatt an
2,488,194
71
35,045
54
5
1393
520
1,546,856
23
67,255
42
4
883
203
Queens Staten Island
2,237,815
109
20,530
40
5
704
309
457,383
58
7,886
31
24
709
822
8,084,316
303
26,681
207
38
4566
2109
NYC Total
Of course the City has an extensive and iconic subway system. But the subway was largely completed over 60 years ago; thus this system serves the oldest developed sections of the city better than areas of new development. As is observable in Figure 1, large sections of Eastern Queens, South East Brooklyn and all of Staten Island lack subway service.
Figure 1 – New York City Subway and PATH Network [5]
These areas are also the fastest growing regions in the city. Staten Island in particular had the highest growth rate of any county in the State of New York from 1990 to 2000 – 17.1% over that period. Table 3 provides a historical snapshot of the growth in each borough since 1950. Over the 50 year period from 1950-2000, Staten Island more than doubled its population while Queens grew by almost 50%. Staten Island has a rail line that is not connected to the rest of the City while the Queens lines end far from the borough's border. population.
The other boroughs, which have the denser network, actually lost
TABLE 3: 1950 to 2000 Population Growth [6] United States: New York State: Manhattan: The Bronx: Brooklyn: Queens: Staten Island:
+86.0% +28.1% -21.5% -8.1% -9.9% +43.9% +132.6%
This dispersion in borough by borough growth rates implies that population is shifting across New York City as a whole and within individual boroughs. This is confirmed by a population geocenter analysis for each borough using data from the 2000 Census. A geocenter offers the opportunity to understand the “balancing point” for the population of a given region. The Census Bureau defines the a center of population as: “the point at which an imaginary, flat, weightless, and rigid map of [a region] would balance perfectly if weights of identical value were placed on it so that each weight represented the location of one person on the date of the census.” [7] What the geocenter analysis shows is that New York City, like many cities around the nation, has become more decentralized. The outer boroughs have grown in relation to the central core in terms of population. The population geocenter of Queens is located just west of Flushing Meadow Park, out towards the end of the Subway system, so that roughly 40% of the Queens population lives more than a half-mile beyond the subway network. Similarly, Staten Island has a geocenter that is now located 1.5 miles from the nearest rail station and 4.5 miles from the Staten Island Ferry terminal – the major transportation hub in the borough. Figure 2 provides both the household and population geocenters for each borough of the City of New York.
Figure 2: New York City Borough Population Geocenters
Source: Authors, based on U.S. Census 2000 data
3. New York City's BRT Initiative Despite this dispersion, New York City remains a very dense city, with an average of about 25,000 people per square mile. The outer boroughs have lower density and more private homes than other sections of the city but have high enough densities that transit remains a viable option even there. Rather than the Heavy Rail Transit (HRT) that serves as the main rail transit now, Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) have some inherent advantages in serving these kinds of communities.
In
addition, there exist opportunities to use abandoned or lightly used freight rail corridors
to develop Light Rail or BRT right of ways. The BRT and LRT modes are not currently utilized in New York City but would seem to have great potential to meet transit needs that the current spatially mismatched network does not serve. For this reason, in 2004, the MTA initiated, along with the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), a study of potential corridors for development as BRT routes. An initial inventory of 80 routes was evaluated to select corridors with high potential for BRT service. These routes were screened for their route potential based on a number of criteria. Key variables included ridership, growth in ridership, limited stop service and peak and base headways. The initial screening resulted identified 37 corridors in NYC that had significant potential for BRT service. These initial corridors largely serve areas of the city that lack subway service. This initial list was then winnowed down first to 15 and finally to 5 corridors in a multiple year process. Table 4 summarizes this process. Figure 3 maps the corridors that were intermediately considered [8]. Table 4: NYC Transit BRT Routes Under Consideration 2004-2007 Borough
Initial
Round 1
Final Corridors (1)
Bronx
7
3
1
Brooklyn
8
3
1
Manhattan
6
2
1
Queens
12
6
1
4
1
1
37
15
5
Staten Island Total
(1) Further changes occurred post the selection of these corridors in 2009 – see text for full description
Figure 3: Round 1 BRT Corridors
Source: MTA BRT Study 2005 The fifteen corridors are the units of study here. These are the corridors that the multiagency study group determined to be technically superior in terms of service optimality. Though the precise technical specifications were not made publicly available (and the original individual corridor summaries posted by the study group have since been removed from the web), these corridors can be said to be the best agency estimates of what constitute viable BRT alternatives. The final five were selected from this fifteen not because of any relative technical superiority but because of budgetary limitations.
4. The social equity and service reach of the New York BRT corridors: a basic analysis Based on the need to understand the potential for each of the fifteen corridors as well as the demographic profile of each corridor, the authors mapped each route in GIS using ArcGIS 9.1 by ESRI Corporation. We obtained data on the underlying demographics by Census block group from the U.S. Census Bureau. This allowed us to estimate the underlying demographics of each proposed BRT route. We then analyzed the route from a route line perspective (i.e. who lives along the route). Given the fact that BRT relies on a wider spacing of stops to improve travel time we also analyzed each route based on the planned stops. This analysis showed that stops tended to be concentrated at major cross streets as well as at other transit connections (subway, local bus and train). Figure 4 provides an example of the mapped results.
Figure 4: GIS Map of Round 1 Route by Stop
To conduct the service quality analysis, this routestop map was buffered by 600 feet around each stop to reflect a reasonable walking distance from any given Census Block to any given BRT station. Blocks were selected based on their intersection with the buffer and their demographics were summarized. The estimates were developed using the 2000 Census at the block group level; county shape files were provided by CUGIR. The data was separated by ethnicity in each borough and each BRT line. The authors analyzed both the number of people living within 600 feet of stops along the proposed BRT lines and the demographic makeup of those people. Table 5 provides an overview of the Round 1 routes and the demographics related to each route by line and corresponding stop. Table 6 conducts a more summary overview of the demographic analysis.
Table 5: Populations living within 600 feet of a proposed BRT route stop
TABLE 6: SUMMARY DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF BRT POPULATIONS Manhattan Boro 1st/2nd Avenues + 125th Street West Side Corridor BRT as a Whole RELATIVE SERVICE
White 57% 60% 77% 65% Over
County Population as Compared to BRT Black Asian Other Hispanic 18% 10% 15% 29% 15% 16% 8% 18% 8% 9% 6% 16% 14% 15% 7% 17% Under Over Under Under
White 47% 5% 32% 52% 31% 8% 61% 34% Under
County Population as Compared to BRT Black Asian Other Hispanic 21% 19% 13% 27% 90% 1% 4% 9% 24% 26% 18% 30% 8% 34% 5% 15% 17% 41% 11% 24% 86% 2% 5% 11% 9% 25% 5% 14% 34% 23% 8% 18% Over Over Under Under
White 43% 31%
County Population as Compared to BRT Black Asian Other Hispanic 38% 8% 11% 21% 60% 4% 5% 13%
Queens Boro Guy R. Brewer Boulevard Hillside Avenue Horace Harding Expressway Main Street + Parsons Blvd Merrick Boulevard Union Turnpike BRT as a Whole RELATIVE SERVICE Brooklyn Boro Flatbush Avenue Flatlands Avenue + Kings Highway Nostrand Avenue BRT as a Whole RELATIVE SERVICE
58% 31% 39%
Bronx Boro Fordham Road/Pelham Parkway Grand Concourse Webster Avenue + 3rd Avenue BRT as a Whole RELATIVE SERVICE
White 32% 38% 24% 24% 30% Under
29% 57% 50%
9% 3% 5%
4% 9% 6%
10% 16% 13%
County Population as Compared to BRT Black Asian Other Hispanic 38% 3% 27% 52% 35% 5% 22% 45% 37% 4% 35% 65% 43% 2% 30% 56% 37% 4% 29% 55% Under Over Over Over
Staten Island Boro Hylan Blvd BRT as a Whole RELATIVE SERVICE
White 80% 91% 91% Over
County Population as Compared to BRT Black Asian Other Hispanic 10% 6% 4% 12% 2% 5% 2% 8% 2% 5% 2% 8% Under Under Under Under
Of the 8 million people in NYC, approximately 1.3 million live in a Census Block Group that is within 600 feet of a proposed BRT stop along one of the fifteen proposed routes, about one sixth of the city’s population. This represents a major expansion of transit service.
As far as social equity is concerned, the authors compared the demographic composition of each borough (which corresponds to a county) with the demographic composition of the total sub-population living within 600 feet of a proposed BRT stop. This is the comparison made in Table 6.
To understand the data more clearly, consider Manhattan. Taking the four Manhattan corridors as a whole (the proposed West Side corridor line and the 1 st, 2nd avenue and 125th street lines), of the 1.5 million people who reside in Manhattan, approximately 26% or 400,000 are within walking distance of a potential BRT stop. Non-Hispanic Caucasian (“White”) people in Manhattan represent roughly 57% of the total borough population. This compares to 65% of the BRT subpopulation (i.e. those who have access to the new route stops), which crudely indicates a small relative overserving of that population as compared to its current proportion borough-wide population. For the other major ethnicities the relative percentages (noting whether there is relative ‘overserving’ or ‘underserving’) are:
African-American (18%:14%) (under) Asian (10%:15%) (over) Other (15%: 7%) (under) Hispanic (29%:17%) (under)
By this rough test, the Manhattan BRT routes over-serve Asians and Caucasians relative to their share of total borough population while underserving Hispanics, African-Americans and Other ethnicities.
This equity picture is not uniform across boroughs. Of the 2.2 million people residing in Queens about 13% live within the buffer for their original six routes, which represents a major increase in average available transit service. But not all demographic subgroups are served equally. African-American and Asians do well in their share of BRT subpopulation relative to borough-wide population though there is a corresponding underserving of Hispanics and Non-Hispanic Caucasians.
This is a case where the specific route choices are significant. The BRT lines that were proposed in Queens extended off of the ends of the existing subway system lines that terminated in the middle of the Borough when the expansion of the subway stopped in 1940. These lines left significant areas of Eastern Queens without subway service and these areas have since been magnets for immigrants and minority families with generally low rise housing and high private home ownership rates. Sections like Hollis and Cambria Heights have been populated by both African American as well as Caribbean immigrants.
The selection of the Merrick Boulevard route for
implementation resulted in a significantly higher level of service for African-American residents in Queens – 81.7% of the people along this route are African-American.
Of the 2.46 million residents in Brooklyn, approximately 438,000 (17.8%) live within 600 feet of a proposed bus stop on the three proposed BRT lines to be placed there. Here the selected route of Nostrand Avenue has a significant impact on the service to African-Americans, as this route hits the key African-American (both native born and foreign born) neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant. This one route alone contributes 49% of the total African-American population that is potentially served by the final five routes selected. . The situation in Bronx is fairly unique compared to the other boroughs. Here the approximately 18% of the 1.3 million people residing in the Bronx were within 600 feet of the three proposed BRT lines in the region. But the category of ‘other’ is especially significant having both the highest proportions in both borough-wide and BRT subpopulations (both close to 28%).
Finally, approximately 444,000 people reside in Staten Island and approximately 16.2% of the population is within 600 feet of Staten Island’s proposed BRT. The Staten Island proposed BRT line seems to serve the predominately Non-Hispanic Caucasian and Asian areas of the borough more so than the other ethnicities.
5. A budgetary postscript
As mentioned earlier, the analysis above refers to a set of fifteen technically preferred routes. There was further winnowing down to five final candidate routes because of budgetary limitations. Table 8 provides a summary of these routes.
Table 7: Final Selected Routes Borough
Route Selected
Bronx
Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway
Brooklyn
Nostrand Avenue
Manhattan
1st and 2nd Avenue and 125th Street
Queens
Merrick Boulevard
Staten Island
Hylan Boulevard and Richmond Avenue
These routes selected serve about 10% of the city’s population. A large portion of that population lives beyond the existing subway network and is poorly served by mass transit. How did this subset of five compare in equity terms to the larger set of fifteen? Table 8 provides a comparison of the selected routes to the routes not selected as well as the city as a whole. Table 8 – Demographic Variation Between Routes Selected and Not Selected
Route Not Selected Selected Total City
NonHispanic caucasian
Population 835,843.00 713,118.00 8,008,278.00
332592 340435 3576385
Delta Selected - Not Selected Delta Selected – City Route Not Selected Selected Total City
AfricanAmerican
%
39.8% 47.7% 44.7%
%
265640 215376 2129762
7.9% 3.1% Asian 103982 62968 787047
%
Hispanic 12.4% 8.8% 9.8%
185463 137424 2160554
%
-1.6% 3.6% Other
22.2% 19.3% 27.0%
31.8% 30.2% 26.6%
89546 64806 1074406
% 10.7% 9.1% 13.4%
Delta Selected - Not Selected Delta Selected – City
-3.6% -1.0%
-2.9% -7.7%
What this analysis shows is that the winnowing process actually reduced demographic equity outcomes. The final five routes served higher percentages of non-Hispanic Caucasian residents than the fifteen, and lower percentages of African-American, Asian, Hispanic and Other.
This increase was not uniform in terms of its source. A large part of the benefits to African-American residents is driven by the proposed service in Brooklyn on the Nostrand Avenue route as well as the 125th street extension of the 1 st and 2nd Avenue route in Manhattan.
And there is yet another twist in this story. BRT Routes in the City of New York were subject to a number of extensive technical studies by the transit agencies as well as by community outreach and engagement sessions. The authors performed a high level of technical analysis to analyze the service impacts of proposed BRT routes in the City of New York. However, post these technical reviews, the MTA and NYC DOT decided to replace a number of routes and reprioritize the implementation of certain routes. In particular, the substituted two Manhattan routes (34th Street Crosstown Bus and Madison (Northbound) and Lexington Avenue (Southbound)) that had not been in the initial fifteen route screened and discarded or significantly delayed two routes in the Outer Boroughs. It is not entirely clear why these final selections were made.
Overall, in terms of rough proportionality, the BRT planning process in New York City and the technical routes selected did initially potentially improve the reach of service
-1.6% -4.3%
significantly. The fifteen routes also seemed to converge on greater equity but diverged from it somewhat once a final budget cull was conducted. The broader intermediate list served proportionately greater numbers of less privileged populations in terms of both current transit access and demographic profile. Cutting back the number of routes of course decreased overall levels of proposed BRT service and unfortunately did so with a negative impact on greater equity. The additional final cull seems to have reduced the equity impact even further. 6. Conclusions and suggestions for further research
The selection of BRT corridors in New York City has taken a number of years and gone from a very large list of 37 corridors down to five final candidate corridors. This analysis has shown that BRT is a good option for expanding service to medium density areas in dense urban areas with existing bus networks and HRT lines for high and lower density areas respectively.
However the five routes ultimately selected by New York City Transit for BRT did not serve all demographic groups equally. While the fifteen technical alternatives expanded both service area and, to a reasonable degree, social equity of transit, the final five routes represented a compromise in terms of operation, politics and ridership. Certain routes had ridership advantages, but for various reasons were not in the final selected five routes.
Many factors came into play in choosing and eliminating routes. Some routes that might have superior ridership were not amenable to the road improvements that would
be needed for BRT service (Richmond Terrace in Staten Island). In some cases these physical realities militated against more equitable as well as more efficient potential routes.
As examples of this the selection of the most southerly corridor on Staten Island was based on road geometry even though the resulting route largely serves the most Caucasian region of Staten Island and is already relatively well served by an HRT and numerous bus lines. Three other Staten Island routes that were in the initial pool of 37 evaluation route had significantly higher levels of minority residents and poorer existing service. But these routes (Victory Blvd, Richmond Terrace and Forrest Adenine) were discarded due to road geometry issues (all operate on 2 lane roads), leaving only the aforementioned final route, Hylan Boulevard, which operates on a 4 lane road in most sections.
Road limitations such as these likely removed routes in older sections in the rest of the city. It happens that many of these had higher populations of minority residents, generally because the dis-amenities of living near such corridors create localized rent gradients.
Such physical limitations should not serve as an excuse for limiting
extension of BRT to lower-income communities, but it is important to note that this limitation could serve as an implicit bias which could create long delays in improving service for minority communities.
Of course the analysis above is still first-stage in a number of ways. Given that we have observed significant variation in the demographics of the populations served by the BRT
routes selected by New York City Transit, an obvious extension of this work is to evaluate both the income and poverty status of areas under consideration.
And another issue is how much travel time is actually saved for each population, especially given other transportation alternatives.
BRT is an ill-defined term and the
benefits that it delivers depend much upon the technologies used to implement them. The BRT pilots in New York City are not necessarily as capital-intensive and therefore not as potentially effective as more extensive BRT systems elsewhere. These corridors have not yet been built but some, such as the one along Hylan Boulevard, seem likely to mainly consist of priority bus lanes with limited stop service and along relatively highcapacity roads. This sort of arrangement will certainly be of benefit, but the incremental improvement will be relatively limited. Both ex-ante and ex-post equity and efficiency analysis need to take these more concrete and prosaic implementation details into account.
REFERENCES [1] U.S. Census Bureau (2003). “American Community Survey Ranking Tables.” (Ranking by county in terms of long commute). Washington DC: U.S. Census Bureau. [2] U.S. Census Bureau (2000). Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) 2000. (profile by county of mode and time). Washington DC: U.S. Census Bureau. [3] U.S. Census Bureau (2000). Census of Population and Housing. “Summary Table 3: 2000 Census by Block.” Author tabulations. Washington DC: US Census Bureau. [4] New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (2002). The Insider Guide: New York City Transit Department of Buses. New York, NY: New York Metropolitan Transportation Agency. [5] New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (2004). Best Practice Model Documentation. New York, NY: New York Metropolitan Transportation Council.
[6] U.S Census Bureau (2000). Historical Population Statistics. Washington DC: U.S Bureau of the Census. [7] “2000 U.S. Population Centered in Phelps County, Mo.” Released April 1, 2001. [8] New York City Transit (2005). “NYCBRT Study: Fall 2005”. New York, NY: New York City Transit [9] New York City Transit (2007). “NYC Transit BRT Project.” New York, NY: New York City Transit.
