Zach Shaner, a Vancouver-based transit writer, has a great (and damning) critique of Seattle's transit system today over at his blog.

Predictably, Seattle's transit service doesn't fare well when compared to Vancouver's; surprisingly, it's not because ours offers less service overall (Seattle-area transit agencies provide 5.68 million service hours a year, only slightly behind Vancouver's 6.18 million), but because of the way those service hours are allocated.

Not to get all Hugeasscity on you, but I'm going to have to get into the weeds for a minute. Warning: Graphs ahead.

First of all, Shaner notes that while Seattle has nearly twice as many bus routes as Vancouver (395, compared to Vancouver's 215), an astonishing 37 percent of those routes operate only during commuter hours—i.e., they don't run during midday at all. Compare that to just 13 percent of Vancouver routes that don't offer midday service. "While Seattle offers the commuter market a wealth of one-seat rides to the downtown core, it does so at the explicit expense of the system’s intuitiveness and its ability to compete with the spontaneity of the car," Shaner writes.

It's pretty dramatic:



Second, Shaner notes that Seattle transit agencies have "an unfortunate affection for the 30-minute headway." Whereas just 30 percent of routes in Vancouver run every 30 minutes or less at rush hour, fully half of Seattle's rush-hour bus service runs on 30-minute or longer headways. Even worse, during off-peak hours (in the middle of the day), only ten percent of routes run every 15 minutes or better, and a full 20 percent—not counting the 37 percent that, again, don't run during the day a all—run once an hour or more. In Vancouver, 28 percent of routes run every 15 minutes or better at midday.

Here's the picture at rush hour:



And midday:



Note that although the number of routes running only every 30 minutes is higher in Vancouver, that city has far more midday routes with midday service running at 15 minutes or better—more than a quarter, compared to less than ten percent in Seattle.

The upshot: To convince people that riding transit is a viable alternative to getting in their cars, the system needs to be predictable and reliable, not random (good service in some parts of town, lousy service elsewhere) and undependable (nonexistent midday service means you may get stranded).

How do we do this? First of all, by equalizing the system—get rid of redundancies (Route 42, I'm looking at you) and reallocate those hours to routes (like the 17) with infrequent service. If that's not enough (and it probably won't be), expand service to increase frequencies throughout the system so that almost every route runs throughout the day. Yes, that will require a tax increase of some sort (or reinstating the head tax?), but voters have shown again and again that they're willing to pay a little more when the alternative is service cutbacks. (Cracking down on fare evasion on light rail—by upping enforcement of installing turnstiles—would increase revenues slightly as well.)

Shaner identifies the third problem with Seattle's transit system as "branding." Noting the dizzying number of separate transit agencies in Western Washington, each with their own literature, transfer system, and online trip planner, Shafer concludes that "the price [of a fragmented transit system] is a chaotic framework with mediocre service."

Shaner suggests renaming all the transit agencies "Sound Transit" to "make things more intuitive for the rider."

However, before we go down that road, it might make more sense to fix the major technological problems that keep people from using transit. Get rid of paper transfers throughout the system, address the widely reported issues with ORCA cards, add real-time arrival information to every major stop so riders will know when, or if, their bus or train is coming, and get rid of the ride-free zone downtown, which is largely responsible for the confusing "pay when you board"/"pay when you exit" system.

Finally, Shaner notes one aspect of Seattle that we really can't do anything about: Our topography. "There are huge lakes, steep hills, ship canals, and an overall dearth of flat land on which to build grids or arterials." While we can't level the hills or fill the lakes, but we could do a lot to make our transit system more reliable, predictable, and friendly to people who actually have cars but want a viable, greener commute alternative.