Private Shuttles Don't Slow Public Buses, Study Suggests

Seattle commuters headed to businesses around the city often wait at public bus stops, even if they aren't waiting for public transit. Seattle Children's Hospital and Microsoft both run private shuttles. A new study from University of Washington suggests travel times on public transit are unaffected by these shuttles.

"To determine if the shuttles negatively impacted public buses’ reliability, MacKenzie and civil and environmental engineering doctoral student, Elyse Lewis, partnered with Swiftly, a company that acquires and cleans up real-time performance data from trackers on public transit," Sarah McQuate reports for UW News. The researchers pulled data on the transit times of a bus route in the six weeks before and after the route was joined by a private shuttle. After monitoring bus times at more than 70 stops for 12 weeks, the researchers found little change in the performance of public buses.