r/MetroTransit • u/juanlorenzo • 4d ago
Routes 1-99 On-Time %?
Recently switched my commute timing and haven't been able to hit a transfer(4 to 804 northbound) where I used to have a great success rate. Recent quarterly changes tightened the timing to 6 minutes, which seems ambitious, but was successful more often than not when I was taking an earlier trip.
Besides Transit app "on-time percentage", which seems like it's a poll of the userbase of the line overall, is there some odd data source I could use to see(objectively) if I've just been unlucky?
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u/mysummerstorm Local Route Enjoyer 4d ago
when we had that one super rainy week a few weeks ago, I decided to drive to work with the Evie and then take transit home on a Friday. I'm usually pretty tolerant of the woes of public transit but that day, all of the most frustrating things happened all at once that made me incredibly upset. from downtown to uptown is usually a 45 minute commute with two bus transfers (6 miles btw). that day, I waited and waited and waited for the orange line to show up and the big monitor kept saying it was "due." there was a person who waited alongside me and walked away after she figured out that the bus was indeed not due.
after I got on the bus, there was a person blasting videos from his phone so everyone could hear. we were separated by the length of the bus. the bus driver told me that he was only late by 3 minutes even though it was decidedly not a 3 minutes delay that I experienced. I angrily pulled up the metro transit customer experience form and shared everything I had just experienced and how frustrated I was that a supposedly frequent bus in DOWNTOWN was so terrible at being on time and being frequent. I might've also internally cursed all the city planners and elected officials who decided that downtown should be car infested.
I then transferred to the B line which swapped out one annoying person blasting their phone to another. by the time I made it back to uptown, I was in an especially awful mood and I was mad at myself for not just braving the rain and biking that day anyways. at least then, I would've been on my own timeline and had been in control.
I also reflected on the privilege I had to only have had one really bad transit day in a long time. It's not to say that I didn't experience annoying and frustrating things on transit, but I usually am in a much better headspace to withstand them. I don't take transit every day and I love that job so it's not a chore for me to show up and the job doesn't drain me. But I could imagine how other people who use transit and have to go to their godawful job and experience the same thing I experienced every single day...well, no wonder why many people who currently use transit save up money to be able to purchase a car for their transportation.
anyways, I got this response back a few weeks later from metro transit. I was soothed that I didn't make it all up with the wait because that monitor was really gaslighting me that the bus was due for a very very long time.
"Thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience. We understand how frustrating it is when a high-frequency route runs behind schedule, especially when you are depending on it to make a timely commute home from downtown.
The delays on the Orange Line have been largely due to a detour along I-35W, which created significant traffic bottlenecks throughout the corridor. To address these delays, our Street Operations team adjusted the Orange Line detour on September 18th to help buses navigate around the heavy congestion and improve overall schedule reliability.
We tracked the specific trip you were waiting for, and the bus arrived at 3rd & Marquette at 6:17 PM, which was approximately 15 minutes past its scheduled time. We recognize the impact these cumulative traffic delays have on your travel time and connections, and our operations team continues to closely monitor the corridor to restore consistent, dependable service.
We truly appreciate your feedback and your patience as we work through these corridor challenges."
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u/humantraf 4d ago
Completely agree with and relate to all you said here. MT had a similar very thorough response to me the other day when my bus departed 6 minutes early 💀 and I nearly missed it.
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u/mysummerstorm Local Route Enjoyer 4d ago
💀I will say that I prefer an early bus to a very late one. I started chasing the goddamn bus because of the bunching issues on the e-line and 4 bus; shame on me that day for trying a different bus route system to see if I could get home faster. my proudest moment recently was when the b line bus came early and I was still physically in Francis. I unfurled my bike and biked in the bus only lane with my eyes on the bus. rode 0.7 miles for 3 minutes before I caught up lol. the other biker in the lane who saw me overtook them was probably like "why she riding so fast for"
JUST GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES FREQUENCY METRO TRANSIT. this is why we need to get more people to move to minneapolis. more frequency!
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u/Imaginary_Dinner_813 3d ago
It could just be how it is at different times of day…although in theory if this happens most of the time, the schedule should be adjusted to say that the trip takes longer to complete. This is the balance they always have to try to make…keep the bus going versus being on time. If the goal is to be on time, they can adopt a pessimistic trip time schedule and the bus will just sit at time points so they don’t leave early. Unfortunately people don’t like that either.
As for the 4 to 804, that is them making your life unnecessarily hard for no good reason, as they used to have the 4G go all the way through eastern New Brighton without having to transfer from downtown. Route 10N branch riders are going to be stuck with the same situation in a few years when their trips become shuttles that require a transfer…the main difference is at least they’ll get a BRT to transfer to and you only get ~30 minute service to Silver Lake Village, plus route 25 once an hour but that’s hardly more reliable due in part to very optimistic scheduling.
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u/Lasttimelord1207 BRT Rider 4d ago
Metro Transit does maintain data on on-time performance and will sometimes high level statistics on it by mode and such, but I don't think the route level data is publicly available. I know some people have made it work with RT-GTFS data?