Tommy Washbush
Within 15 minutes of beginning his shift, Taylor Bock has checked in with his supervisor, completed his safety inspection and, among other tasks, adjusted his seat and side mirrors before buckling himself in behind the wheel of the bus he’ll drive throughout Madison’s morning rush hour.
Of the 178 buses to roll out from Madison Metro’s east-side garage each weekday morning during the school year, Bock, at 7 a.m., is among the last to depart.
“They stagger the buses based on when they’re leaving,” says Bock, who hauled armored tanks while in the Army. “The goal is to try and not have too many buses started at once in the garage.”
One after another, the 40-foot, 12-ton vessels have, since 4:48 a.m., dispersed across the city in an orderly, almost uninterrupted, deluge.
“It’s a really efficient system,” he says.
But many who depend on Metro to move them around town contend that Madison’s bus transit system is increasingly inefficient.
Although ridership records are being broken each year, and demand for additional routes and service are at an all-time high, the 95-year-old bus transit system is showing signs of buckling beneath the weight of its success.
The solution may seem as simple as hiring more drivers and buying more buses, but being just one of several city departments funded largely by Madison’s property tax, meaningful increases to its $56 million operation budget are unlikely.
“Right now...we’re kind of at, or even past, our capacity to provide the service to everyone who needs it,” says Drew Beck, Metro’s planning and scheduling manager. “And even if we were somehow able to magically conjure up new buses, we wouldn’t have anywhere to put them.”
Metro planner Drew Beck: ‘We’re kind of at, or even past, our capacity to provide the service to everyone who needs it.’
As Madison Metro’s popularity outpaces its political support and garage space, customers are increasingly put in a pinch as overloaded buses pass them by or transfers are missed when drivers fall behind schedule.
“We hear of overloads or pass-ups, but we simply don’t have another bus to pull out of the garage to fill in the hole,” says Mick Rusch, Metro’s customer service and marketing manager. “We do the best we can.”
Unfortunately, Metro has few immediate remedies. A proposed $190 million system of express buses is years away, and state lawmakers have stymied efforts to establish a revenue-raising transit authority that many believe is Metro’s only chance of keeping up with demand.
Metro’s general manager, Chuck Kamp, maintains the situation is far from hopeless, but concedes that overcoming the challenges within a rapidly changing urban environment will be a tough fight.
“But it’s a fight worth fighting because it is essential if we’re going to build a true Bus Rapid Transit System, or even a satellite garage,” he says. “Without space or better regional funding, this could be a long-term problem.”
An anonymous customer phoned Metro on Feb. 2, to complain about a driver who fails to give clear instructions and “tell people the bus is full.”
The customer suggests this is a recurring issue on Route 80, which serves the UW campus free of charge.
“He just lets [us] get on the bus and then sits there at the stop for about 3-4 minutes,” according to the rider, as transcribed by Metro’s call center. “Then he says, ‘You guys should wait for the next bus because by the time you figure out you should be behind the [white] line...the [next] bus will be here.”
Unamused by the feedback, driver Jerry Jackson penned a defiant retort to his supervisors.
“I do not tell [people] the whole bus is full,” he wrote. “They are supposed to be highly intelligent people. They should know the bus is full.”
When city leaders, in 1955, considered purchasing the unprofitable Madison Bus Company, it’s unlikely they imagined that, 60 years later, their successors would have the problem of “providing adequate and easy movement of people” on account of too many bus riders, rather than too few.
That year, a special committee looked at whether Madison should purchase the Madison Bus Company. The year before, as cars began to dominate the urban landscape, 118 transit companies shut down, leaving just as many cities without bus service.
City leaders worried that if bus transit went the way of horses and trains, Madison would suffer from declines in downtown commerce, rapid decentralization of people to outlying areas and a loss of its tax base.
In its 1959 report to the mayor and Common Council, the committee identified the paradox Madison was caught in: The more vehicles crowding the roads, the slower the speed of buses; the slower the speed of buses, the more riders turn to automobile ownership, leading to even slower bus speeds and lower ridership.
The limitations of bus transit in Madison are largely unchanged from those that led to a 62.5% drop in ridership in the 14 years following World War II. As was the case then, frequent stops along congested streets have kept rides long and tiresome, without any guarantee of arriving anywhere on time.
According to Madison Metro, riders’ top five complaints last year were, in this order: being passed up, driving behavior, late buses, rude drivers and early buses. A handful of riders complained about overcrowding.
The biggest obstacle to resolving these issues is also the one that can’t be removed: Madison’s geography.
“Everything gets squeezed into the isthmus, and it’s essentially the only way to get through town, unless you want to get ferried across the lakes,” Beck explains. “Not only are all of the buses funneling in, but so is all the rest of the traffic.”
Metro toyed with localized changes to service, aimed at eliminating delays. But following fierce public outcry, the city’s Parking and Transit Commission rejected the changes.
“What happens is that you end up squeezing a little here to add over there,” Beck says. “But inevitably you’re going to hear from the people getting squeezed.”
Thirty-five times a day, Route 3 buses simultaneously depart from the East and West Transfer Points, providing service along some of Madison’s busiest pedestrian corridors, from Monroe Street to Atwood Avenue.
Once an unrushed route for Metro drivers, it now is among the busiest. Despite buses being added to the route in recent years, riders are still often passed up, particularly those waiting at stops along the isthmus.
“It’s not just the 3, it’s everything,” says Beck. “I talked about the peak commute times being rough, but we’re having overloads in the middle of the day and on the weekends.”
It wasn’t always this way. Ridership declined from 13.95 million in 1979 to 9.8 million by 1996. During this period, riders had to bus downtown to transfer. For those living or working beyond the isthmus, taking the bus was time consuming and inconvenient.
The transfer point system in 1998 changed that. “The idea was to get people to these farther out areas, to their jobs, without coming all the way downtown and all the way back to get somewhere,” says Beck. “We didn’t see an increase in ridership that first year, but then it slowly started to take off.”
Transfer points weren’t the only thing stoking the city’s renewed interest in public transit, however. Faced with a chronic shortage of parking, UW-Madison began contracting with Metro for unlimited ride passes it doled out to students and employees, paying Metro each time a pass was swiped.
Edgewood College and Madison College soon entered into similar contracts.
“It was so popular that we were getting complaints it was just for the big companies,” Rusch recalls. “So we created a program for small business, too. Today we have about 100 signed up.”
By 2005, ridership surpassed 11 million for the first time in 20 years.
A proliferation of downtown high rises and increasing density along the isthmus and beyond necessitated citywide service expansions, bringing the number of fixed routes from 23 in 1997 to 67 in 2013.
Says Kamp: “Now what we’re seeing is that people like to have a nice place to live, but also want to be near a transit line.”
Metro general manager Chuck Camp: People ‘want to [live] near a transit line.’
In the course of an eight-hour workday, Taylor Bock may drive 15 different routes, each of which can vary slightly depending on the time of day. Memorizing the routes is the easy part.
“There is a lot more to juggle, and sometimes it doesn’t go as smooth as you’d like,” says Bock, who began driving two years ago. “I think I’m a pretty good driver, but then something happens, and I’m definitely humbled.”
“It’s easy to get comfortable with the bus like it’s your own car,” he explains, but adds that snow, ice and rain can be frightening reminders. “Once you feel those wheels get loose on the ground, it brings you right back to reality and reminds you just how large this vehicle is and the type of focus it takes to stay safe.”
There have been stark reminders of the dangers in recent years. In 2011, a bus driver hit and killed a woman crossing University Avenue, and last May, another bus killed an intoxicated man who fell underneath the bus as he was exiting it on East Washington Avenue. The earlier death lead Metro to install an external beeping system whenever a bus is turning — but that system has led to complaints for being too loud.
In addition to ensuring that riders arrive safe and on time, drivers are expected to assist passengers and enforce rules. “I don’t tolerate excessive swearing,” says the former Army solider.
And when riders blast music through crummy cell phone speakers?
“If someone is playing music I’ll ask them to please shut it off,” Bock says. “The worst is when people let their ringtones play for like 45 seconds before answering their phone. I don’t know why they do that.”
New drivers undergo rigorous classroom instruction, including special customer service training. Beyond keeping cool amid the typical frustrations of heavy traffic, drivers are also expected to be professional in their handling of difficult passengers.
“Not everyone is cut out for this work,” says Metro driver and trainer Clint Boon. “Operating a bus takes a lot of patience.”
Boon says driver training is “100% better” today than when he was hired 17 years ago. Last month, he and fellow driver and trainer Jim Killerlain were preparing materials for the refresher training that full-time drivers undergo each summer. Whatever issues happen to be the flavor of the day will determine the emphasis of the training.
This summer’s course will focus on pulling in and out of stops efficiently, which helps drivers stay on schedule.
“When I started in 1998, it was easy to stay on time,” says Boon. “Those seconds tick down the more stops you’ve got to make, the more people you pick up.”
Shaking his head in disbelief, Boon almost appears stressed out just thinking about it. “Man, we sweat seconds.”
Despite the drivers’ best efforts, they still sometimes struggle to make their stops on time. Sometimes they make them too early.
Madison College student Cristen Conners says that in early January the Route 2 bus she relied on had been arriving and departing early from a stop near Highland Avenue, leaving her to wait in the cold until the next one arrived 30 minutes later.
“It happened a couple of times before, so I was sick of it,” she tells Isthmus. “They weren’t adhering to their schedule.”
Metro’s response when she complained: Arrive at the stop five minutes earlier.
From Jan. 1 to March 25 of this year, riders have lodged over 800 complaints against Metro drivers. The most common complaints have to do with late buses or buses that don’t arrive at all.
On Jan. 7, for example, a “very angry” rider left a message with Metro’s call center, which receives roughly 1,000 calls a week, that the bus she was waiting for hadn’t arrived as scheduled at either 6:16 a.m. or 6:41 a.m.
“Now she is frostbit and has to walk all the way back home to warm up, and go out again to freeze and wait for the next one,” according to her transcribed phone message.
Metro’s GPS system revealed that both buses had in fact arrived, the first, three minutes late, the second, two minutes early.
Many riders arrive at their stops or transfer points to see their bus pulling away. Usually, the drivers don’t stop.
“I knew the bus driver saw me because the people on the bus was saying, ‘Hey, he wants to get on the bus,’” alleged a rider on Jan. 2. “I hit the back of the bus with my crutches...he did not stop.”
Again, Metro encourages arriving five minutes ahead of scheduled departure times.
Driver Taylor Bock is ambivalent about leaving behind late arrivals. Stopping poses a safety hazard for other motorists, he says, and reinforces the perception that drivers can, and will, stop anywhere.
“I feel bad when I don’t pick those people up,” he says. “But we’re not supposed to load or unload at a non-stop. Doing that will slow down your route, too.”
Madison Metro has tried to make the system more efficient. Often, riders revolt.
Earlier this year, Metro recommended eliminating every second bus stop along Jenifer Street to help prevent drivers from falling behind schedule.
The solution was reminiscent of the now-defunct Office of Defense Transportation’s skip-stop policy during World War II. To conserve gas for the war effort, public buses were instructed to stop only at every other intersection.
The city’s 1959 transit study also concluded “the frequency of bus stops has an important bearing on the speed of bus operations and affects operating costs.”
But Metro’s recommendation to remove stops along Route 3 was rejected by the city’s Transit and Parking Commission following a community outcry. According to public comments, riders were concerned about walking an extra block during cold weather or while carrying groceries from the Willy Street Co-op.
Others alleged Metro’s attempt “to hollow out bus service on the isthmus” went against the city’s reputation for “fostering sustainability,” even though fewer stops would reduce noise pollution and fuel consumption.
Metro is in the process of rolling out new smart cards that riders can tap against the fare box instead of swiping to help speed up boarding times.
But what Beck and Kamp are most excited about is a proposed $190 million bus rapid transit system, which would consist of thirty-five 60-foot articulated buses serving stops spaced farther apart. A fare prepayment system would drastically reduce boarding times.
Kamp says a limited roll-out of bus rapid transit could occur within five years. “But that is very optimistic given our lack of a Regional Transit Authority and what appears to be a lack of key critical level of political support,” he says.
In 2009, the Legislature passed a law allowing the formation of regional transit authorities — and a half-cent sales tax to fund mass transit. But the law was rescinded after Republicans took control of state government the following year.
Beck says a regional authority “would really alleviate a lot of the funding issues that we’re facing.”
Local officials acknowledge the importance of a robust mass transit system, even if they struggle to find funding.
Mayor Paul Soglin has argued that poverty and economic development have to be addressed through education, housing and public transportation. This echoes the sentiments of city leaders 60 years ago who wrote “public transit is a public responsibility.”
While companies like Epic have the dough to pay for bus service, many neighborhoods, especially those south of the Beltline, do not.
In 2011, residents of Owl Creek, a planned, low-income neighborhood on the city’s southeast side, pleaded with the city to add bus service there.
“It’s the classic balancing act where Metro adds service where it makes sense for ridership reasons, like when we added service on University Avenue and Sheboygan Avenue that same year, and we added service to Owl Creek as more of a coverage and equity issue,” says Kamp.
Ald. Denise DeMarb — whose district includes Owl Creek — says public transit remains woefully inadequate in some parts of town. “I hear from people all of the time that the bus service isn’t enough to address issues of employment or even basic needs like grocery shopping,” she says.
But added service won’t happen soon, not even for Epic. In May, Metro will begin providing all-day service to the new UW Hospital East at the American Center on the northeast side.
“This is the last new service we can put out during peak time,” says Rusch. “We’re just tapped out; staff-wise, bus-wise, garage-wise.”
See related: "Department of complaints"
