The Problem with Timetable Padding
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- Опубликовано: 2 май 2022
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There is nothing more annoying than sitting at a stop just so you don't leave early; except getting to your station just on time only to find your ride left a few minutes early.
@@ccityplanner1217 But what if they aren't MY connections.
Of course if it is my connection, I agree fully.
@@ccityplanner1217 The kind where I'm already on the train and don't want to wait for more people to crowd on😛.
I of course understand the train has to wait for connections, I'm just jokingly expressing the irritation which comes from a transit system with low frequency whete pulsing is important. Definitely a functional system, but not perfect.
I was on the California Zephyr a few weeks ago. When the train left Denver, we were an hour and a half behind schedule. However, when we got to Chicago, we were almost back on time with an arrival at about 3 P.M. I thought one of the engineers on the run was Casey Jones or something, but as it turned out, Amtrak has worked the CZ's schedule (and a lot of their other schedules too) with padding to ensure that, should a train be delayed (which is not uncommon on Amtrak, especially the long distance lines), then a train would make up an hour of time coming to a destination that, from what it looks like, has a lot of people like Salt Lake, Denver and Chicago. So, it appears that when a train is on time, they just wait at that major population station until it's time to leave, probably.
Thats unfortunate but at least a little more excusable on such long distance services on tracks they don't own!
@@RMTransit In the USA, the railways were given the real estate for their tracks in the 19th century. In many cases along with a lot of real estate alongside the track as well as cash money. Part of this deal was that they would provide passenger service. Amtrak was formed so that the railways could perform this commitment through a separate company. If the railways violate this commitment by failing by causing Amtrak trains to be late, they should be hit with very, very heavy fines to provide an incentive to NOT violate their commitments.
If they still do not smarten up, then the real estate that was given to them for the tracks should be taken back and given to another company that will keep their commitments.
I was on Via #2 from Vancouver to Toronto, on my way back to Jasper from a bike trip out west. Sometimes this train runs days late due to CN shenanigans, but on my trip, we had an excellent run over the Rocies and got into Jasper 3 hours early! I was literally able to walk around town and get breakfast with some people I met on the train. Since the creation of VIA, the schedule has been padded by almost 24 hours over the whole trip. It’s insane.
A lot of the long distance trains on the Northeast corridor operate drop off only From Washington DC to NYC, their terminal. This allows the schedule padding to be applied on the drop off only stops since they can leave once all passengers are dropped off at that station.
TTC added padding to its streetcar lines a couple years ago to help its short turn numbers. As a regular user of the streetcar, it absolutely made streetcar operators drive slower. Oh and half the 504 cars still short turn during rush hour anyways >.
Happens so much in Britain. Most typically between the penultimate and last station on the line. For example trains from Leeds to London are timetabled for 11 minutes between Leeds and the first stop of Wakefield. In reverse, they’re timetabled for 17/18 mins. All to avoid financial penalties for arriving at the final destination late.
Well there you go with your "I'm sure this happens in other places", it's especially rough between the last stops!
This is probably a conspiracy theory. It is probably not the operator that sets the timetable but the authority.
It's bad but I would rather them pad timetables at the end of the line in a terminal station than in the middle when there's already a bunch of people on.
@@stefansoder6903 No, British trains were privatised until the pandemic, it was a private decision by the train companies.
@@domtweed7323 Yes but not the timetables. The train companies don't decide timetables all by themselves. What do you mean by "until the pandemic"?
In Romania, padding on the train network often happens by scheduling longer stops at major stations or hubs along the route. That way, if a train is supposed to wait 10 minutes at a stop but it arrives 8 minutes late, it still arrives 2 minutes before the scheduled departure.
This was done multiple times in germany, often to make the timetable more stable, but its often about the lack of infrastructure, for example stations where trains can meet on a one-track-line. For example, from my hometown to the next city are 16 min or 20 min by S-bahn (its not quite a 30-min-frequency). With the next timetable, the travel time will be 22 to 25 min with the argument of stability.
Another example is that years ago the S-bahn always left my station by min '10 to be at the next station at '14, where it crosses the S-Bahn at the opposite direction. They changed the timetable a few years ago so now the S-Bahn leaves the station at '08 in order to wait at the next station two more minutes for the train in the opposite direction 🤯
I imagined it would happen fairly commonly in Germany, hopefully not by DB in Toronto!
@@RMTransit don't worry, DB is not responsible for the regional timetables in Germany at all 😄
@@Black_Forest_Julez DB Fernverkehr does exactly the same.
@@Black_Forest_Julez I don't think that's entirely true, cause DB Netz as infrastructure operator is responsible for timetable planning. DB Netz is just a different company than the ones operating the trains, so they likely won't be responsible for timetables in Toronto. Planning process for regional trains in Germany is a bit complex with the states ordering service and operators making offers, but most regional trains don't have a lot of time reserve while on journey, the exception being single track lines.
For long distance trains there is a set amount of time reserve, I think about 7 percent of normal travel time to compensate boarding delay, bad weather (less acceleration) or other disruptions. Good example is ICE connection Erfurt-Leipzig. Usual travel time is 42 - 44 mins, but if trains run at full speed from station to station they can make it in like 37. DB even estimates a travel time of 38 mins in their live data provision if trains are delayed.
Quite often during normal operation on this line trains have to cross tracks between the station and therefore slow down from 250 to 130 km/h. They still make it on time though.
I am so glad you covered this subject. It is defo one of my pet peves. Some train companies in the UK deliberately add padding so that train is not classed as late.
I’ve noticed this on parts of the Elizabeth Line (such as between Forest Gate and Manor Park). Also on Greater Anglia services traveling in the London direction, including those which call at Romford (I’ve noticed that they are all now scheduled to depart Stratford one minute later than they used to).
One place where you can definitely have padding is at the terminal stops, because nobody is on the vehicle when it is waiting to turn around.
In London, we changed the circle line from an actual circle to a teapot to have terminal stations at Hammersmith and Edgeware Road, and allow padding. That greatly improved performance and journey times on the line. The main Overground lines are two semi-circles for the same reason.
One very obvious cost of padding is that you need more vehicles and onboard staff to run the same frequency of service, and each vehicle does fewer journeys per day.
This is also my experience with buses generally in the UK: little padding in the main timetable, but a fair bit in the turn-around at each end.
Yes padding is very common. In fact there's actually a whole station in the UK called Paddington!
Another thing that is apparently quite common is for a specific vehicle that arrives at a terminus on time not to be the next one to depart the other way along the same route.
Love the analogy of walking to the ice cream shop as I had no idea about padding but have experienced the effects. Now I understand why my Milton line train has the tendency to crawl unnecessarily from Union to Kipling. Once again, Tokyo excels at the concept of scheduling and spacing of trains with to-the-second on time performance, so padding doesn’t seem to be an issue - although time tables in Japan have been criticized for being too rigid. Would electrification of the GO Network with trains that can accelerate faster and things like automatic train control to maintain spacing of trains assist with eliminating padding issues as train on time performance would be much better? It would also a seem (again comparing to Japan) that having staff on platforms to help trains depart on time would be an asset.
Yep, the crawl to Kipling likely also has to do with concerns about conflicts with CP!
Electric trains are faster than diesel, but that doesn't make the timings any more consistent, except that if they do have to stop unexpectedly, they can get back up to full speed again a bit quicker, but the odds of this actually happening are the same as before.
UK timetable planner here. Interesting and thought-provoking video. A timetable needs to be stable and able to recover from minor delay and perturbation, such as dwell time variation, but too much indeed causes perverse effects.
The UIC406 and UIC451 capacity guidelines give some good principles to start from.
Somewhat of a funny tangent. The long distance trains here in Finland have a rule about compensation if the train is more than one hour delay. It is absolutely amazing how many times I have been on a train that is 55 minutes late.
Reminds me of a very common thing on my route here in the Netherlands. Enough padding so a train running at line speed will get near the station about 3 minutes early, but then has to stop Android start before entering because the line was still blocked, which takes more time than just slowing down earlier and crawling to the station. Super frustrating since if the train is on time I can get an earlier transfer (1 minute instead of 16 minutes) but when the train is early it has to wait outside of the station and I miss my connection :(
The only thing that changes in Italian railway, except high speed, year by year, are travel times slowly being longer and longer. Two minutes more this year... A minute more the next year... Three minutes more the other year... Some trips are nowadays 10 minutes longer than five years ago!!
I would argue that padding is only necessary on routes with low frequency to guarantee connections to other low frequency lines. If you run high frequency (trains every 5 min or more often), it is important to keep the trains coming in the planned intervals to avoid holes in your service and thus crowding at stations for the next train which will be slowed down by too many people getting on.
I agree with you though that the obsession with padding comes from the idea that companies want to guarantee travellers arrival on schedule rather than try to provide the fastest journey possible. This is very common on European High Speed Networks where trains will be scheduled for ~290 km/h instead of 300 km/h to account for delays (possibly to save energy as well).
Transit networks can have unintentional padding too by the way. Some networks do not adjust their schedule for night time and wind up having extremely generous padding because stops take way less time at night.
Even with 5 minute frequency, headway management should help prevent padding.
You are wrong, I'd say it's the exact opposite. With short headways it is important to have padding or for instance, an empty slot every few trains. For example if you have trains every 3 minutes, you might have to leave an empty slot every 5 trains so that if any incidence occurs, the trains can slowly catch back to their schedule.
If there is no extra time, it's impossible to get back on time again
@@namesandpiper This is not how metro scheduling works. I even explained why: The train afer the hole in your timetable will overcrowd and cause delays on your line. You have to keep even frequencies for optimal passenger flow by slowing trains down that are too far ahead or in case of bigger disruptions you have to do short turns.
I don't know where you even get this idea from, no system in the world does this.
@@kurzzug160 Well in that case my local regional rail is imaginary because they do it. Leaving a gap is not common in metro like services but on a regional rail specially where different lines merge in to a single one, it is crucial to have, maybe 2 empty slots per hour in the timetable in order to compensate for inconveniences.
In the case of a metro service where you say overcrowding can be an issue, of course you are not going to leave slots empty but in those cases is where you have to inflate the timetables a bit.
If you try to squeeze the maximum on the network including short turn times as you said, a single late train can cause a domino effect that literally ruins the service for the rest of the day because you don't have a margin to recover
For example, regarding what you said about trains in the night have too much padding, in my local suburban service, a full line on weekends is scheduled to take few minutes less than on weekdays, even the timetable is adapted to it, so that's not really a problem if you plan the timetables acording to the headways at any given time. And believe me, in peak time, trains never have to wait despite the timetable being actually longer than on weekends because, you know, contrary to your belief, a train every 2.5 minutes with a tight timetable is not s great idea and it's unlikely that the times will be met
In Switzerland, train schedules often contain padding, often leading up to major interchange stations, because the train systems relies on a Taktfahrplan providing fast connections if trains are on time, but very long connection times as soon as delays are introduced
On my city's bus network, there's only really two schedule timings for every route, "regular" and "nights/weekends", meaning a bus running at 7 in the morning peak will operate on the same schedule as one at 7pm. This usually leads to buses being late during peak times and being early in off-peak times. Many drivers (but not all) combat this by leaving a few minutes late from the first stop. It makes bus schedules during these times very unreliable as you might have one driver arriving 5+ minutes late (on purpose) and the next one being on time or even a minute early.
Elsewhere, it's called Recovery Time. There was extensive study in Switzerland several years ago, of the benefits of end loaded vs incremental recovery time, I think it was done at ETH Zurich, if I remember correctly. Also, see Railway Timetabling & Operations by Hansen & Pachl and Railway Operation and Control by Pachl. There is a science to timetabling and there is a science to operation. Both sciences must be applied simultaneously. Of course, the science of either is generally only taught in Europe and Asia.
A few times in the past, I would arrive on one GO train at Pickering station, where I had to change trains to continue to my destination. The connecting train would pull out just as my train was arriving, then proceed a half kilometre up the track then wait for the train I had just left (now running express) to go ahead. Left the station on time? Yep. Screwed over anyone relying on that connection? Yep. Late for work? Yep.
Not ideal, stuff like this should be better integrated
Hmm, was that platform/section of track needed for anything else? Seems weird as usually it's preferred for a train to wait in a platform than outside of one, though that depends on situation...
@@fetchstixRHD no, track 3 at Pickering is, for all intents and purposes, a dead-end stub. The next local train using that track would arrive 20-25 minutes later in those days.
@@RMTransit it happened twice in one week, then not again for several years as I recall. I'm sure somebody got their ear chewed at one level or another.
There's also padding added into London Underground schedules to 'regulate' the service, ie to create an even interval service where you can't otherwise do so. This could be because of junction of terminal throat constraints, or because some services get branched off or terminated short leaving an uneven service pattern (eg you've taken one train out of a 5-5-5-5 minute interval pattern, creating 5-10-5, you'd want to even out the intervals a bit)
I was raised on the concept of "5-minutes give or take" meaning that I should be prepared for my bus/train to show up 5 minutes early or 5 minutes late and still be considered "on-time." I know it might sound ridiculous to to give a bus/train a 10-minute window to get somewhere and still be classified as "on-time" but it has done wonders for my stress levels, lmao! :)
This is standard practice on the Dutch railway network. It's to make the high frequencies possible, but it's also done to prevent any fines which the government gives to the NS (national operator) when they dip below the on time targets that were set in the 'core network' concession. This was clear from the timetables of some lines that had the most delays, every year these lines got some minutes added so the delays would still be within the limits.
Government fineing the government....
Sounds familiar to british rail selling stuff to it's subsidiaries for only £1.
GWR did exactly the same in privatisation in UK back in 1990s. They realised in the 00s, if they change the time table, they no longer have to pay the discount to (ONLY on) season tickets.
Reading to Padding-ton ;) used to be scheduled to be between 19 and 24 minutes on the old HSTs - (non stop) intercity trains.
*footnote: I have been on a delayed 1700 departure from Padding-ton to Reading that was scheduled to arrive at 1723. Due to a trespasser on tracks, all trains were paused and the 1700 actually departed at 1712. The driver with nothing ahead - to make up / catch up the time table - opened up the speed and arrived in Reading at .... 1723. Twelve Minutes is the potential time for this part of the route.
In the 00s, the time table was changed to have ALL trains between Padding-ton and Reading take 30 minutes!
Every train either way always arrives EARLY so ergo there is NO season ticket discount!
The GWR has anywhere from four to six plus rails so there are two that are exclusively for HST now called IEP with the ironing board seat Hitachi trainsets.
With covid, the GWR time table has been even more padded to Padding-ton to be near 45 minutes for a what could be LESS than Twelve Minute journey on a greatly reduced (tph) frequency service.
On the topic on prioritizing reliability over travel time, I'd love to see something on nationally integrated clockface schedules, like the one in Switzerland and the planned Deutschlandtakt in Germany.
The idea is super fascinating to me: instead of trying to minimize travel times, you instead try to get them to multiples of 30 minutes between nodes (big stations with transfers). And you upgrade infrastructure specifically in places where it can get you down to the next lower multiple of 30 minutes.
You also need to be able to represent your entire network as a bipartite graph. And you need big stations with lots of platforms because all of the lines meet at the same time each hour.
I must admit, I don't fully understand the details and implications, which is why I would absolutely love a video about this.
This also happens in East Asia as well. Timetable of Korean KTX have been changed over time, and now the travel time between Seoul and Busan bearly meets the initially-promised 2 hours and a half. Even though there are increasing number of intermediate stops and various train routes sharing same high-speed corridor, it is quite disappointing to watch those nearsighted solutions to simply achieve better on-time performance.
Metra (commuter rail in Chicago) is notorious for padding a schedule such that a train will be listed with a later relative travel time if it terminates at that station than if it runs through. It is how Metra can ensure trains can arrive on time at their final destination even if they lose one minute in a run (not to mention that by policy, Metra trains are not considered late unless they are over 5 minutes and 59 seconds behind pace).
I've worked with bus schedulers from a few different companies around the world and there is one common pitfall that has been described to me a few times. Say they schedule 10 minutes between a pair of stops, but they look at their data and see that buses typically take 11 minutes. If they want to increase the reliability of the service, they might increase the schedule time to 11 minutes. But then buses take 12 mins. They increase the time to 12 minutes and buses take 13. Before they know it they've added in all this unnecessary time (and increased operating costs) but with no improvement in punctuality! It's just as described in this video, adding slack to a timetable can have the knock-on effect of influencing the behaviour of the drivers. In general, any changes to a timetable will influence the behaviour of the humans that operate it. This change in behaviour can be difficult to predict and can be a significant challenge for a scheduler that is considering making changes to a service.
Awesome video, and I completely love this topic. I’ve never sat down and thought about how padding can just add additional delays.
Really really enjoyed that outro music too!
There are two causes to padding; either the line is saturated and the speed limit is forced down to make way for more trains or your signaling and track infractructure are in disarray and in great need of maintenance because prior to this state, timetables were respected to the second in some cases. So something went wrong in the meantime.
Padding is used by politically run lines to mask the lack of maintenance or the saturation of the line most of the time.
Padding has become a crutch that almost every transportation company is using these days and it all seems to go back to Amtrak which is probably the worse for padding schedules even on corridor trains. Even the airlines have added padding to their schedules (in my experience usually about 20 minutes) which helps pad their on-time percentage (unless your jet blue of course).
However, you also have the issue of transit agencies going in the opposite direction. In my experience many transit agencies these days (RTD in Los Angeles started doing this in the early 1980s) by cutting schedules to the point where even if everything goes perfect on a run (and when does that happen?) the bus will run late, reach its layover point late, sometimes to the point where the bus arrives after it was supposed to leave.
In UK, during late British Rail and early private sector operations, there was a policy on the Great Western Main Line (GWML) to add in about 10 minutes padding to the 25 min achievable timing between the penultimate stop for most long distance trains from the west, Reading, and the London terminus, Paddington. This was primarily because the performance regime only measured on-time arrival at the terminus, so you could arrive a full 10 minutes late at the major interchange hub of Reading, miss your tight connection and have extra 30 minutes or an hour added to your individual journey, all while the long distance train arrives 'on time' in London (technically). Performance measurement has been subtly changed since then to look at times at intermediate stops now so the incentive to pile all the padding into the last part of the journey is reduced.
We use this in Italy as well, but usually it is done only for the last stop.
So if a service is expected to get some delay enroute the travel time between the last and the forelast stop gets quite relevant.
Example:
In my area between stations A and B (final) the travel time can be;
7 mins for local trains operating on short sections
9 mins for local trains operating on long sections (will be overtaken once)
21 mins for a local in the morning that should be overtaken by three other trains
A worse version of this in Sydney happens like this:
An express train gets held up by network congestion
It then waits just outside a local station, for 2, 3 or even 4 minutes.
It then slowly moves through the local station without stopping.
God forbid that time could have been used to let people get on or off at the local station, even though it wasn't planned to allow it.
Yes yes yes, this needs to be talked about more.
Why very high frequency is such a great thing. If you leave a little early on a sub 5 minute headway, it is very likely that it will not be noticed, especially if the next train can also run a little fast. The issue then becomes headway variances causing the vehicle in the larger gap to slow because of extra loading
This. Prague trams are awesome, but whenever one gets delayed, it keeps picking up delays and you end up with trams bunching up as the front one is absolutely full.
At least I get to feel smugly superior for waiting an extra minute for the following empty tram I can already see at that point B)
Our local buses are currently padded up the wazoo, so for the most part they travel really slowly so they don’t get too early as there aren’t many stops where they can truly wait out of the way. I have to admit when I’m on the bus I don’t notice because I’m reading or otherwise occupied, but if I’m driving it can be quite annoying stuck behind a bus doing 40km/h in a 60km/h zone for example… and there’s that second, third, etc order effect you mentioned.
Was riding buses the other day on a system, that really could’ve used some padding, pretty much every bus was late, and we missed two connections to hourly buses.
What I have seen is that you dont need to do obvious spaces in schedules to make it work. I used to ride on a S Bahn where the train would be scheduled to leave at :25 and :55 at the central station and arrive at the terminal station 31 minutes later at :56 and :26 respectively. At the terminal destination, Busses would leave at :02 and :32. So, when the train was delayed even by 7 or 8 minutes the schedule had just enough flexibility to arrive with "only" 4 minutes delay, close but enough to catch the connection busses. There was no additional time allocated in the schedule, but powerful trains and well trained drivers that were able to scratch seconds of by braking harder and closing doors a bit earlier.
That said, I find it easier to hunt delays If you have enough opportunites to do so (accelerating and braking)
Excellent video. I didn't realize such a simple thing was so complicated. Great content
Thanks Doug, I feel like your comment could apply to all of PT!
The other benefit of padding that I didn’t see covered as a major benefit (although it was touched on) is schedule consistency. I live on a bus that takes about 45-50 minutes for the entire trip in both directions. Evenings and weekends we have a single bus that goes back and forth constantly (and it touches the LRT at three stations, and it crosses 2 other routes that do similar twice each, so in practice it’s more convenient than every hour if you just need to get out to the train). It’s not the system I would design, but it works surprisingly well.
During weekdays it’s 2 buses, evenings and weekends just one, but still easy math.
The drivers definitely take advantage of it, typically they leave stations quite late off-peak but arrive at the next on time. You’d never connect from this bus to anything anywhere other than the stations, so again, it works.
It’s so much more convenient knowing it leaves at :58 after the hour than having to actually check the schedule throughout the day. Which is great since our transit app is pretty miserable and the actual schedules are even worse.
I don't know if you've seen, but the REM de L'Est project has been torpedoed by both Québec's government as well as by the city of Montreal. Not entirely though, it is going back to the drawing board. They seem to suggest it's not gonna go downtown directly anymore, but is gonna connect the green line, the blue line and go to Laval and the north shore. Good thing, if you ask me.
You are describing periscly what happened with Barcelona's rail system, back in the 90s it used to take a train about 1h and 5 minutes to go from the end of the line to Barcelona, nowadays it takes 1h and 30 minutes when it's not late, after the made a policy that will refund any ticket when a train was 15 minutes late and during the year they add a lot of padding even so the train is 5 o 10 minutes late half of the time
Padding is inevitable unless you have a perfect railway. When customers demand a timetable vs. rough intervals the incentive is to use padding to fix the timetable. Drop the timetable, incentivize operators to squeeze in an extra run or two during a shift though this might cause signaling complexity. Add sufficient dynamic signage to update customers about the next train time. High quality apps and data feeds for map integrations are needed too.
As for Padding, I remember reading a quote of Raoul Daoultry, wich in the 1930s was head of operations of France's Chemin de Fer de L'Est , stating that his trains were on time because schedules were tight. This was also the same atritude seen in the 'good ol' SNCF' wich applied the so called 'Regularity Margin ', this one being of 4 1/2 minutes for each 100 Km travelled, with 2 minutes for signals with unexpected aspects and 2 1/2 for speed restrictions (later in some TGVs this was reduced to 3 minutes per 100 Km). This meant that despite some padding, engineers really had to run faster. Later they just changed the system, and introduced a quite complicated concept of 'economic drivimg ', with reference speeds and sections of cruising, and things got quite messy. But also some infrastructure constraints became evident. So they just introduced some extra padding (here's a good example: a direct TGV from Paris to Marseille via the HSL was traced in 2 hours flat in 2007 vs 3hrs 15 today, nonstop trips), but things are not better. So if to much slack is introduced, everyone starts getting way too relaxed. By comparison to yesteryear (1970s), in wich it was common practice to see french trains stopping at the exact second, being rigourosely on time, today thats rare. And one of the very frequent case of endemic delays is the ast system of commuter/RER lines of Paris. Complaints about delays are very numerous.
Oh wow! So the French used to be as accurate as the Japanese?! Heck, if they can do this with way less tech than now, why on earth did they abandon this work procedure???
@@HenryMidfields basically a change of mind, and lots of deferred maintenance in their convencional network. And of course, today there's much more people using certain lines of the system, a good example being Paris 'RER A' line (the RER system became a victim of its own success, getting crushed by the overwelming crowds of users) wich carries a million users on a daily basis. As some components of the infrastructure got way too old and unreliable, the level of service just came down naturally. They're investing to recover, but that takes time.
A different kind of jazz I see.
Unfortunately, here in Seattle, the light rail now has to have padding built into the schedule thanks to being deprioritized along the at grade portion of the line. SDOT was seeing cars pile up at stoplights along the lines, so they petitioned the city to require that light rail always have to wait whenever there's any cars at the intersection trying to cross the lines. So, now it takes longer to get to the airport.
Thats super rough, sitting and watching people go by should be for drivers, not the other way around!
@@danielkelly2210 unfortunately, the light rail has a lot of balls in the air, and elevation is low on the priority list. Unfortunately, we're going to continue to live with this for the foreseeable future because it's more important (and rightfully so, IMO) to get the light rail running east-west, rather than just north-south.
@@danielkelly2210 im from the rural US so I'm also baffled by trains waiting for cars, but thats mainly because my mental image of a train is a 1/2 mile plus long frieght train with 0 ability to make unscheduled stops. (I remember an ad/warning about how trains will definitely stop for a car on the tracks, 2 miles after they hit you)
And so i know that passenger trains are generally much shorter at something like 4-10 cars but i still don't think about them being able to stop quickly.
But ignoring my flawed mental image of trains, the entire point of a train is to keep people out of cars because of *mile long list of reasons*, so deprioritized trains still feels so wrong, if the train is coming the boom gates lower and you better not be on those tracks for long. (They are designed to break if they would trap a car).
@@danielkelly2210 even the frieght trains near me (NY-Canada by the watertown side of the mountains are only around 100 cars long, i haven't counted in a while, and the max delay is rarely more than a minute or 2. I'm fairly certain I've waited at some stoplights longer than i have for the average frieght train in my area.
Doing the math:
Box cars are 52' long (std)
A train of 300 = 15,600ft = 2.95mi
Using my town's speed limit of 40mph it takes 2.95/40 = 0.07386hr = 4minutes & 26 seconds.
A 300 car fright train takes about 5minutes if you include signal timing for the gates and stuff. I'm still certain I've had to sit for longer at stoplights during rush hour.
So yeah a 4 car passenger train doing 40 at the crossing (i assume you want some safety margin and not going full speed through level crossings) shouldn't be worse than a single cycle of a stoplight, and lets way more people go through than that stoplight did. (Math always wins)
I deal with slack a lot with buses. The drivers depart too late and still make it on time to their last stop but the scheduling in the stops between are rough
The alternatives, which have often been used in Melbourne , are station skipping (trains) and short-running (trams) where they terminate a few stops short and turn around to make the return trip less late.
As everyone who lives in Toronto can attest, short turns also happen here.
In Denver (Denver RTD system), I was catching a bus in a bus station (union station underground tunnel) at 5:03 PM. It pulled up at 4:49 PM, and let one person off. There is a door that separates the indoor area from the busses. Since she was coming out, I held the door for her. Then, the bus took off 4 minutes early without even giving anyone the chance to get on! I waited around in case they were switching busses or something, but that was not the case unless it was a strange case where the new bus didn’t show up(?) Anyway, I learned you can’t rely on busses here. The next one was an hour later, assuming you can actually catch it of course.
RENFE (spain) implemented a refund policy on their AVE (high-speed) services and quickly became masters at padding... Even at non-AVE services!
Best transportation source on RUclips!
I was waiting for a video like this. You don't know how many times TTC buses will go slow just to feel like they're too early and so padding happens. Some drivers don't care and will still drive fast and will have a much longer break time for themselves at the stations. I feel like I'm the only one that gets annoyed about this because I notice that ppl don't really care as long as they get to where they're going. Slow or fast it doesn't matter to them. I actually care and get aggravated with slow drivers.. to the point where I'll literally feel like walking up to the drivers and tell them to drive faster lol.
This is why the subway is good, whether they padd or not. The subway has to be a consistent speed all the time. Except for obvious reasons.
I definitely feel like its more reasonable to just have an extra 5min scheduled and arrive early to just wait a little longer at the station for lower frequency lines. (More people will complain about being late than early)
But for high frequency routes if you aren't in mixed traffic you shouldn't need to pad very much. And just try to maintain a target of a train every x minutes. (I count trains sharing track with other trains not operated/scheduled by the same company mixed traffic, so all rails owned by frieght would count as they are outside the control of the transit company/provider)
Considering all factors mentioned, then how is Tokyo able to run half-mile-long commuter trains with as little as a 2-3 minute headway and maintain a schedule at every stop so accurate that you can set your watch by it, right down to the second?
Maybe they should set arrival times into their schedule in addition to their departures at the busier intermediate stations. And factor in distances. They'll still have to meet arrival times as part of their performance criteria, but there's still the "shock absorber" between the arrival and departure times if arrival is late. This is what is scheduled in some Tokyo lines, so that operators are still expected to be on their toes, while also creating some leeway for congestion-induced delays.
I've been told that Hasselt-Brussels used to take 48 minutes in the early 90's. Then every single schedule reform added a few minutes. These days it's about 75 minutes. Even on my own, shorter, commute, I will leave Brussels with 5-10 min delay and the displays will tell me "don't worry we'll totally make this up by the time we reach your destination". They rarely do make it up, but it has happened.
The Federal Railway Agency in Switzerland announced a plan to increase timetable padding in western Switzerland since trains here are often late. That way, trains that would previously be late are now on time! What a genius idea! That way they can continue to neglect this region and invest heavily in other regions that already have great transit. So in western Switzerland we'll be stuck with unreliable slow trains with hourly service on most lines (that don't cover much of the region), while the rest of the country enjoys fast and reliable trains that covers even the most remote places, with 15min headways... But hey, they're widening one of our congested highway for $10 billion and thus flood our gridlocked cities with even more cars, so everything is fine!
The opposite of jamming trains to form timetable that's impossible to be on-time has been happening in Tokyo (過密ダイヤ/dense timetable)
someone at ttc need to end the slow-down order at every streetcar junction
This is very noticeable on the London Overground. Sometimes the trains really piddle down the line at 15 miles an hour. These are trains that are capable of at least 70mph. It's just stupid and it ends up being much faster to cycle on some legs.
I cam understand going a little slower than max because redlining an engine is bad. Assume the train goes 70 when at full throttle, maybe plane for 60 to ease up on the wear placed on the train system and go faster when you need to make up for lost time.
The only reason i see to go 15mph is if you are near a station or if your timing a junction where you have conflicts with other trains and you need to arrive in a very specific time window. (In this case i would assume passengers are more tollerant to going slowly than a full stop because you are still making progress)
Otherwise i have no idea why you would go 15mph for anything other than a speed limit. (I know frieght trains in my hometown are limited to 40mph because of multiple level crossimgs and "sharp" turns, it used to be 20 but they raised it. Ironically a derailment happened right around the time of the change so it was slightly controversial)
Fall and Rise of Reginal Perrin (1970s BBC Comedy) addressed this in a letter by Reggie to British Rail Southern Region: Every morning my train is eleven minutes late. This is infuriating. This morning I took a later train. This also was eleven minutes late. This also was infuriating. Why don't you re-time all your trains to arrive eleven minutes late? - then they will all be on time.
Ugh, padding can be so annoying! On my main route, it means frequently stopping to let the clock catch up. it makes traveling short distances irritatingly slow. They haven't bothered to modify the schedule in two years at least. It makes you feel like they don't respect your time,. I get why some padding is needed for sure, but sometimes it can really be excessive. You are totally right about that. Even worse is when management doesn't listen to operators. It's amazing how often that happens. That's what comes of a system being run by people who don't use it, though.
a good solution would be to forget precise timetables altogether. run a service as "every x minutes between" e.g "7am and 10am". then, if trains are delayed, the frequency suffers briefly but the travel times don't change. average travel times will be consistent whichever method you choose, but with this method, the median travel time will be lower.
This works well with high frequency, but not with the "1 train every 120 minutes" timetables. Especially if you need transfers to work. It depends on the distance, but here in Prague there was some research that exact times stop being a concern for trams only once you reach something like a 5-minute interval.
I'm pretty sure that this is why Exo decided against extending the Candiac line to Saint-Jean due to thinking transit times would be too long despite just adding two stops on a straight line in what should have been a faster means if getting downtown from Saint-Jean over the express bus.
The best padding is the padding that customers don't notice. I hate being on a bus that suddenly announces he's staying at this intersection for 3 minutes because he's running early. Bus tracker didn't show him running early, so from a customer's perspective, he was on time becase he arrived when the tracker said he would. But now, a bus full of people is sitting at a street light for 3 minutes. Aside from the feeling that everyone's time is being wasted, I can only imagine what drivers in the cars wanting to make a right turn feel because the bus is going to sit there for 3 or 4 light cycles.
Now, technically, the bus may arrive "on time" as it proceeds down the line but, to everyone who was already on the bus and to everyone who had walked to the upcoming bus stops using bus tracker which was using the buses location and travel speed to estimate arrival (not including the 3 minute "delay"), the bus is late and it has inconvenienced everyone's time. These long "catch up" stops are rarely at a train station or major transfer point which makes them even more frustrating. Imagine being on the bus to get to the subway only to have the bus wait 3 minutes 1/2 mile short of the subway station.
So, padding may be necessary and often works. To make my point, padding really only works when customers don't notice it.
I really like the look of the go transit trains
What do you think about the padding that busses do? (Only scheduling major stops)
I'd imagine that can actually be useful on express-local style services that only have passing loops at some stations.
Also in Italy we have padding, expecially with regional trains. its because the Railway infrastructure Is full of train and if one of them is late, other trains have the "time" to recover. The problem Is the infrastructure: we have to overscale the Railway infrastructure Always, and then raise the number of trains
I hear with long-distance travel, the policy of DB is actually the opposite. In case of conflict, the late train has to wait. (Which explains why so often, when my train was late and clearly trying to catch up, it actually got later.) The idea seems to be to reduce the number of late trains. Again, it's likely the incentive structure, where promptness is calculated as the number of trains at least so many minutes late. (This does not, by the way, count canceled trains at all.)
I don't think that timetable padding is a bad thing, but here in Calgary, I've noticed an unintended side effect. Some bus drivers will drive faster from one time-point to the next, to give themselves enough time to jump out of the bus and grab a coffee and a snack at a corner store near the time point.
Here's an idea: increase frequency of transit so that a precise schedule is not needed. miss the bus? Next one will be here in 2 minutes, no worries
Ontario electron coming up. Can you talk about what you would build instead of hwy 413?
I needed to pad out my schedule to make time for this video
Not sure if you already spoke about this or plan to do a video, but curious to know what you think about the “buck a ride” plan proposed in Toronto?
Amtrak pads like 2 hours on some trains
Where's this from at 2:55?
My bus often runs a couple minutes late. To make it look like the bus is actually on time, they always add about 5 minutes of padding between the last two stations, which is super annoying, as it makes the bus look punctual on paper even though it doesn't really arrive on time at the stations where it actually matters.
So they basically cancel a bus. And then two show up at once.
@@offichannelnurnberg5894 I mean i wish my bus came every 5 minutes, but it's more like one every hour if i'm lucky haha
That... Explains a lot. 😰
That's used for airplanes as well, isn't it ? (I'm thinking of easyJet in particular)
You're basically explaining the European signalling system ETRMS... 👍
I think the Canadian has a pad measured in days.
I sometimes noticed bus timetables calculated to such a long travel time that the bus would arrive on time even if stuck in rush hour traffic.
That means that if there is not much traffic, the bus of the same line might actually depart a few minutes before the time in the timetable.
A confusing regulation for all passengers who now must keep a different time in mind from the one on the timatable, just to make sure they won't miss their bus.
The "Zeigersprung" rule of German railways is just as bad: It specifies that the posted departure time is when the train gets moving, so the doors can close up to a minute before that. From a passenger's point of view whatever procedure is required between door closing and departure is irrelevant, what counts is the last moment you can board.
So transit operators around the world, please post realistic times and keep to your timetables. If a line is consistently unable to operate on time, make the timetable more realistic as an interim measure but doing something to speed up operation, such as priority at traffic lights, would be much better.
Sometimes I think system I write on a day pads too much. I think if they were to just increase the frequency a little bit by cutting off some of the padding they wouldn't be in the situation they're in. And some of the bus routes I use only run on these odd headways like 22 minutes when they could be running every 15 minutes.
Airlines have been doing this for years.
It's less of a problem with airlines because trips don't usually consist of LOTS of stops.
@@RMTransit True, but they still do it a lot.
There is an energy aspect to the topic that you didn't mention. If the shedule gives a bit more time than you'd need, you can drive more energy efficient by letting the vehicle roll more and having a lower average speed.
If you educate the drivers on how to use the padded time to decrease energy consumption, you also do not have the slack problem, as they will not just go slower somehow but exactly in the way you want them to. Deutsche Bahn for example trains the drivers to drive energy efficient if they're on time or early. Therefore I disagree with the slack argument. If the drivers got proper training, they will handle the situation efficiently.
More energy efficient is still a slack time... it's a project management term.
London Overground is awful for padding. It is so frustrating that what are powerful the trains are driven so slowly - our small tube trains often travel faster than Overground trains.
I don't mind extra travel time as long as I have a seat and power in my laptop, and it's predictable
The worst thing about timetable padding is: It rewards engineers who run slow, or the ones who are afraid of the PTC. Then it disincentivizes running at speed. The guys who do, are the ones who have to sit at the platform while the conductor checks his watch. Running commuter service used to be about getting up to track speed as fast as possible and then choking out everybody on the platform at your next stop in a cloud of brake smoke as you make your Full-Service grandstand. Then you get the highball; kick off the air and swipe the ever-loving dogshit out of that throttle straight to 8 and move on to the next stop while turning fuel into noise. Railroading sucks now.
YRT: so much padding that buses literally travel at like 40 km/h in the BRT lanes, negating the benefits of the lane itself
Padding should be implemented by "long" stops at "major" stations, not, by lowering speed. In turn "major" stations (usually stations with major intersections) should be evenly distributed across the lines.
Get ride of time tables for inner city snd just have enough trains so it's turn up and go
Uh please talk about Milan’s transit it’s beautiful and vast 😃
what if instead you just had a range of time stopped at the station
See: Amtrak’s Crescent
I am against padding. The correct thing to do is find out what the problem is and fix it.
I really disagree with you on that. The reliability of the train you're on and the reliability of catching the next train is much more important than the 5 minutes you were slower than otherwise.
Let's look at an example: Switzerland. In Switzerland there is a set timetable so every half hour you arrive at a big train station so you can comortabily change the train. If there wouldn't be any padding (Swiss trains are generally slower than they could be), there would be a delay for every small problem and hundrets of people wouldn't catch the next train and had to wait an hour/half an hour. How would it help me to be at the train station much too early? I couldn't do anything there, only wait unconfortabily outside for the next train.
Also your argument was that train operators will be slacking and chill while they should do work. I doubt that has an impact, I even doubt that happening at all.
I really don't see why you shouldn't have padding, it makes reliability much worse and could have a cascading impact on every other bus/train in the system because they would have to wait if there's a problem
I never said we shouldn't have *any* padding, but when services are getting slower and slower needlessly and making thousands and thousands of trips less attractive thats really bad!
With regards to operators "slacking", I agree (with you). From my experience (Britain) operators generally don't where they've padded the timetable to the final stop, they mostly arrive "early".
Ideally I'd love to have reliability and speed, but if I had to choose I would prefer reliability.
Edit: this reminds me of a repeated "quote" - a fast train was regularly held up because of a local one that often was delayed itself. When retiming the fast one was mentioned, the response was "the solution isn't to slow the fast train, it's to make the slow one run to time"(!)
Just a thing which you dont realy mentioned that it could also save energy along the way by lowering the top speed(so jou have less resistiv drag force) or that the train are able to roll out instead of breaking. So like always you need to find a compromise between padding to litle and padding to much. I dont really like your last few videos because they are mostly focused on the pasenger and not so much on the infrastructure operator
Yep, in Sweden we recently added more padding in timetables because trains were constantly running 2-5 minutes late due to minor issues that cause a ripple effect on the whole system
@@RMTransit But does it really make it less atractive? Does the average user even know it is slower than it could be? I'd say not. For the average train rider it is worse if you come late according to timetable than later in absoulte terms but on time according to the timetable. If it says in the timetable I arrive at 14:13 I want to arrive at that time, I don't care if the train goes 200km/h or just 160.
Vienna is dual tracking ist S1 Sbahn line to give it is own right of way to cut frequency form 15-10 minutes down to 5-2.5 minutes ther can be no minute of pading in that scaduel.
Sure there are problems with it but I'd rather have a few minutes of padding on an hour long journey when the alternative is missing my connection. The problem when travelling through Germany with DB is that trains are unreliable enough that you often just have to assume trains will be delayed. Combine that with 3-5 min to make a connection (on the same platform) and you'll just miss connections too often. Instead of loosing say 5 minutes per hour of travel time to padding, which can be done at stations where people can have a bit more time to get in and out of the train, you have to take a train early to make sure you'll be on time. That adds 15-60 minutes to a journey and that'll drive people into cars like nothing else.
Meanwhile in the Netherlands trains can usually make up for a few minutes per hour and they're also reasonably fast, making for a pretty usable system. If they could create the same system across the border and speed up the trains on both ends by another 50km/h, a lot of people would probably be willing to take a train instead of driving.
I would rather my timetable be slower and more reliable than fast and inconsistent. IMHO your argument is invalid.
I remember encountering padding on a GO train ride home from a soccer game last year. The train idled at Union Station for 30 minutes. I can't say anyone was enthusiastic about that. The GO schedules were still wonky because of covid, though.