Good transit planning is always about understanding and accepting that there are trade-offs.

Before discussing which route goes where, what we should be focusing on first is how much of our transit resources do we want to be dedicated to doing one thing over another and if we want to put more money into achieving a more balanced network or not.

In transit consultant Jarrett Walker’s book, Human Transit, he lays out how there are no black or white solutions when it comes to transit planning. The underlying geometry of transit requires communities like Guelph to make a series of choices on a spectrum between two desires. Examples of these choices include choosing between high ridership numbers or expanded coverage; requiring riders to transfer or creating an incredibly complex system; or making people walk further to bus stops or have them closer together, slowing down service with more stops.

A ridership goal would focus bus service on streets where there are large numbers of people, where walking to transit stops is easy, and where the straight routes feel direct and fast to customers. Since service is concentrated into fewer routes, the frequency is high, and a bus is always coming soon, usually 15 minutes or better.

However, with a coverage goal, bus service would be spread out so that almost every street had a bus route. Spreading it out may sound great, but it also means spreading it thin, resulting in infrequent routes, even those on the main roads. Infrequent service means predictably low ridership and higher costs and areas with higher demand for more frequent service would have people waiting longer as buses would be too full.

Longer routes can serve more people along the line but require more resources to remain frequent. Double the route length, double the number of vehicles required to keep the frequency the same. Shorter routes are more frequent and are not as prone to delays but will require transfers to go longer distances.

Peak services can handle large influxes of riders at the same time. But vehicles cannot be used throughout the day in other places. However, all-day service is more consistent and easier to understand, but vehicles may have capacity issues at peak times.

Focusing on direct services rather than offering connections brings a complex and infrequent network. Having good facilities, and short waits achieved through frequency or pulses makes connections easy.

Running transit in mixed traffic, where congestion is high, makes reliable operations impossible. Giving transit a path around congestion means it can run fast and reliably.

Technology can be a tool by first defining services to fit together as a useful network and then selecting the right technology for each service. Focusing on technology as an end in itself means sacrificing access.