Mr. Irick led the successful implementation of the first-of-its-kind Express Bus Network Redesign for a portion of a large city bus system. This redesign was conducted entirely in-house and encompassed several steps from planning to initial implementation and revision following implementation. These steps included:
- Compressed technical effort to create more direct routes from outlying areas to the two key business districts to speed up journey times for most customers;
- Fewer but strategically located stops, also to speed up service;
- Increased weekend and off-peak service to improve accessibility to more customers seven days a week;
- Development of a comprehensive suite of public materials including web sites, new schedules and maps both online and printed with a significant on-street and media campaign to familiarize the public with forthcoming changes, including training agency staff to effectively communicate the changes on the street and anticipating and customer reactions and queries.
- Monitoring of express bus route performance in the first months of the service roll-out, noting which routes and schedule frequencies worked and which didn’t.
- Rapid response, in days or weeks, in adjusting service levels and frequencies to successfully address any initial crowding or reliability issues.
The key results in addition to increasing the number of weekday and weekend trips after one year include:
- Adding three new express routes;
- Extending the hours of service operated on three routes;
- Average overall express bus speeds increasing by 10% with speeds increasing by 28% at the single tunnel crossing thanks to effective inter-agency coordination;
- Improved reliability, with an increase to the average percent of bus trips completed within 5 minutes of schedule from 64% to 71% and shorter waits—75 seconds beyond scheduled time instead of 100 seconds in the prior year;
- Reduced crowding on bus trips, with standees being reduced from 42 to 30 weekday trips and 5 to 2 weekend trips, year over year.
