Koopzilla24
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With MVRTA's rebranding to MEVA, increased funding, new management, and lack of an operator shortage, things are looking very good for transportation in the city of Lawrence and Merrimack Valley.
Over the past few weeks, I've been looking at a theoretical restructuring of MEVA's bus routes away from the hub and spoke to a downtown hub transfer location and to a more comprehensive city coverage using largely the same routings. I had two goals for the redesign:
- Make crosstown trips easier
- Add more service to the Lawrence commuter rail station
The interactive Google map is here.
The biggest change that I made was to combine routes across the center of Lawrence. This change made for a lot more single-seat ride potential and shouldn't require additional operators or buses to maintain headways on most routes as the resources would be combined. Overall though a few routes had significant extensions or reroutings to service a wider area which requires hiring a few more operators and purchasing additional buses to keep at least 30min headways.
Another key change made was changing the 12-Crosstown from a small loop to being a zigzagging city crossing route with the intention of serving as either a way to cross North Lawrence or transfer between lines without having to go into the center. There are also now routes that do not serve the transit center directly. The new Route 9 passes a few blocks east while the 21/75 combo terminates at Lawrence Station. Lawrence Station itself sees an increase in routes servicing it from 2 to 4.
On the Haverhill side, I extended the short 22 all the way across the city to try to connect the schools with parks and shopping centers but kept everything else largely the same. There are many other smaller changes made that can be seen comparing my map to the official one on MEVA's surprisingly good website.
Over the past few weeks, I've been looking at a theoretical restructuring of MEVA's bus routes away from the hub and spoke to a downtown hub transfer location and to a more comprehensive city coverage using largely the same routings. I had two goals for the redesign:
- Make crosstown trips easier
- Add more service to the Lawrence commuter rail station
The interactive Google map is here.
The biggest change that I made was to combine routes across the center of Lawrence. This change made for a lot more single-seat ride potential and shouldn't require additional operators or buses to maintain headways on most routes as the resources would be combined. Overall though a few routes had significant extensions or reroutings to service a wider area which requires hiring a few more operators and purchasing additional buses to keep at least 30min headways.
Another key change made was changing the 12-Crosstown from a small loop to being a zigzagging city crossing route with the intention of serving as either a way to cross North Lawrence or transfer between lines without having to go into the center. There are also now routes that do not serve the transit center directly. The new Route 9 passes a few blocks east while the 21/75 combo terminates at Lawrence Station. Lawrence Station itself sees an increase in routes servicing it from 2 to 4.
On the Haverhill side, I extended the short 22 all the way across the city to try to connect the schools with parks and shopping centers but kept everything else largely the same. There are many other smaller changes made that can be seen comparing my map to the official one on MEVA's surprisingly good website.
