The Right Frequency

I got an email from a colleague today asking me if there was “a national standard for transit frequency ranges”. Off the top of my head I wasn’t sure, though I know 15 minute headways are generally seen as “frequent” when it comes to the new mapping standard.

So I did a bit of digging and found a paper from the Transportation Research Board. I skimmed through and as I was looking at some of the charts stumbled upon the exact answer I was looking for…a short simple chart that laid out a pretty simple frequency standard for urban service.

I posted this on twitter and many weren’t happy with this one.

So I did some digging to see if I could find more that matched the twitter sentiment. Seems as if the one I had posted was an older version.

There’s a newer version of The Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual (TCRP 165) from 2013 that is more comprehensive. The stupid thing is 805 pages but I found what I was looking for…and it wasn’t as simple.  So I took the relevant information and made the chart below. It comes from page 199 to 201 in the PDF.

This made things a bit more detailed and … frequent.


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