By dependability I mean a few different interlocking things that all come down to this: in order to be better than owning and operating one's own car, a transit system needs to help people achieve what they want to achieve, when they want to achieve it, without giving them additional headaches along the way.
1. Resilience
One crucial part of this is resilience: if something goes wrong, either with a transit vehicle, a street, or the whole dang city (think a storm), or in someone's life (missing a bus) it can't shut down the whole system or create an impossible delay.
There are a lot of ways to achieve this: not every system needs to or should look the same. One basic way is frequency: a broken down vehicle or missed bus doesn't destroy someone's day if the next one will be right along.
A lot of metros run on this basic plan (albeit an actual vehicle breakdown can throw things off due to blocked tracks). It's also a central feature of what gets called "turn up and go" transit.
I did not look up the schedule for this Paris tram. It came anyway.
But it can also be achieved by having multiple mode options, for example: if the bus isn't running, a subway can get me there, or a bike lane, or good pedestrian access, or something.
This is why closures on the Amsterdam metro didn't derail my trip there. It wasn't the only way to get where I wanted to go!
What matters is that one problem doesn't cascade through the whole user experience.
2. Point to Point Coverage
A flexible transit system is also one where I can actually get from point to point in the city: where if I need to run an errand after work and then pick up my kid and then go home all those places are covered by transit, and I can reasonably get between them.
If I can't, I'll probably not take transit.
What does reasonably mean? Well, some of this comes back to frequency (waiting an hour between buses for a 5 minute errand is going to feel unreasonable, especially in heat or snow). Some of it is about speed (see below). And some of it is about the feel of things, vibes if you will: am I always routing through the same hub for each trip so it feels like I've spun my wheels doing each errand, or do I feel like I'm moving from place to place? And yet more is about city design in the first place: a 15-minute city will have an easier time with this than one where every trip is 10 km.
Bikes of course can help with this, if the distances are short enough and the bike paths are plentiful--as here in Amsterdam.
3. Speed
Dependability is also about speed, because what feels like a reasonable trip depends on how much longer it takes than other modes. If it takes 11 min to drive somewhere and 48 to take a bus, I might take the bus sometimes, but the odds of taking a car go way up (this is an actual example from my trip to Minneapolis). That goes double if I have to break my journey for some errand or if I have a small child with me.
This is something RER-style service like in Paris is good for, getting across the city fast.
Now, speed and coverage often are in conflict because of cost and basic physics: not everything can run everywhere and stop everywhere and also go fast. But there is a critical balance, one sometimes helped by express services or multiple modes.
The Elizabeth line is another great example of this--and it also provides redundancy with other elements of the system, as well as good point-to-point coverage for new areas that weren't well served before.
In fact, that may be the key take away here: these all feed into each other. Dependability is about thinking about transit as people's primary option, not just as a backup for those with no option. It means frequent, fast transit that covers the area, so that people have multiple routes and modes to get places when they need to.
And it's not impossible; it just requires political will to spend money. And voters' willingness to see the return on investment over a long haul.
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