(LA) MTA plans to redraw transit map

[question everything]

(not sure whether this topic belongs on this forum, apologies if not)

Article Last Updated: 9/24/2006 11:11 PM

MTA plans to redraw transit map
Proposal aims to quicken travel, cut redundant lines
BY RACHEL URANGA, Staff Writer
LA Daily News

(snip)

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has spent $1 billion over the past decade to ensure that people like de Paz and Medina - poor, immigrant, transit-dependent - are not stranded for hours waiting for a bus or, once aboard, forced to fight for a seat.

Under a federal consent decree imposed in 1996 and due to expire next month, the MTA has added more than 2,000 buses and implemented other service improvements at a cost it estimates at $1.2 billion. However, in cobbling together a transit system across its 1,433-square-mile service area, the agency has been unable to make the trips faster for riders like de Paz and Medina.

The $3 billion-a-year agency hopes to change that beginning in December with a long-awaited plan dubbed Metro Connections, which officials predict will save the MTA millions of dollars and create a more efficient system, but critics fear will inconvenience regular riders. And while officials also predict it will attract more riders by creating a system dictated by people's travel needs rather than the layout of the streets, opponents say it will actually reduce service.

(snip)

In the San Fernando Valley, for instance, that means that Route 94 - a 30-mile line down San Fernando Road from Olive View-UCLA Medical Center to downtown - would be divided into two segments and the route itself shortened. But critics complain that fewer bus routes and fewer service hours will have a huge, negative impact on those who rely on public transportation.

(snip)

Like most transit systems, the MTA operates on a grid, with buses crisscrossing along parallel and perpendicular streets. That means that some routes are jammed, while others run with just one or two passengers. And whether a bus is full or empty, the overhead costs - gas, maintenance and salaries - are the same. That conundrum is at the heart of Metro Connections. Agency planners believe that eliminating redundant routes or those with low usage will save money. And adding shorter, more manageable routes that take riders directly to major destinations will also attract customers.

(snip)

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_4391594

[phantom power]

1. I see an opportunity for route-optimization algorithms.

But then, I see almost everything as an opportunity for optimization algorithms.

It would be a good problem. Lots of competing metric trade-offs. Minimizing number of buses, maximizing passenger load per bus. Preventing passenger overcrowding. Maximizing route coverage. Minimizing average trip-time over as many possible destinations as possible. And at least one of those trade-offs would be "understandability." An algorithm might come up with a highly efficient solution, but that solution might involve routes that are too complicated for a human to use for planning their trip.