Nearly 25% of TARC buses run late. Here’s how it plans to fix that.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Nearly a quarter of TARC buses don't make it to their stops on time. This causes big delays for thousands of riders.

TARC is on a mission to improve the reliability of its "Frequency" lines -- the most popular and most frequently used lines in the city.

The improved reliability will be driven by TARC's Control Center and Operations Center, where supervisors will begin using real-time data to monitor bus locations on the most popular routes -- #4 4th Street, #10 Dixie Rapid, and #28 Preston Highway. Nearly half of TARC's 17,000 riders use those four routes daily.

To be considered a frequency line, the route must have buses arriving every 15 minutes.

Alex Posorske, TARC's director of marketing and communications, said when one bus is running late, it throws everything off. That's something he knows firsthand because his wife uses the Preston Highway route every day.

"Something that happens in the morning might still be affecting riders' trips at the end of the day," Posorske said. "You have one bus that gets behind schedule right at the beginning of its route -- it can be really hard for that bus to get back on track throughout the day."

That's why, starting Jan. 29, buses running late on the busiest routes will swap to "drop off only" until they get caught back up. TARC's control center monitors delays, and only 76% of those buses make it to their stops on time.

To be considered on-time, a TARC bus has to be at its stop within six minutes after the scheduled time.

So next week when a bus falls behind on one of the most popular routes, it will stop picking up riders. People waiting when those "drop off only" buses arrive will have to wait up to five minutes for the next bus to come around.

TARC's latest adjustments include changing the way the transit service monitors buses. It's opening a line of communication between employees at its headquarters and drivers in real time to dynamically adjust bus locations when buses begin to crowd too close to each other to keep buses on schedule.

The goal is to provide a more reliable ride for TARC customers. This effort expands on a pilot program of a similar effort on the #23 Broadway bus that brought noticeable reliability improvements to that route late last year.

"What we found was really encouraging," Posorske said. "Between August and December we saw a four percent improvement in on-time performance on that line."

"Every time we can make sure that a bus is on time, that's allowing a customer to get through the course of their day," Posorske said, adding: "if just one initiative can help us improve by four percent, with all the other initiatives we're working on -- that's when you can see big big gains for riders."

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