Podcast: An inside look at BART’s complex scheduling dance

Changes coming in September will revolutionize BART’s schedule by adding a layer of consistency in the timing of trains across all 7 days of the week that will be unlike anything BART riders have experienced in the last 50 years. The latest edition of BART’s podcast series “Hidden Tracks: Stories from BART” explores what the schedule change means for you and takes an inside look at everything you’ve ever wanted to know about how the schedule is made.  BART’s Manager of Scheduling and Planning John FitzGibbon explains how new software has transformed what used to be the transit equivalent of sausage making into a coordinated symphony that has the prospect to save valuable time for thousands of riders.

(John FitzGibbon)

Transcript below:

JAY SATHE: Hello, everybody. And welcome back to Hidden Tracks stories from BART. I'm your host and I'm here with John FitzGibbon who is our master of scheduling. I know that's not your specific title, so why don't you introduce yourself?

JOHN FITZGIBBON: Yeah, my name's John Fitzgibbon. I am the manager of scheduling and planning at board and that's what I do.

SATHE: I've been down by your desk a few times and I wish I could understand slightly more about what I see on your computer. But it's the magic that makes the trains run on time. Mostly it gives the time. It gives the trains a time to run on time, too.

FITZGIBBON: That's correct. Yes. We basically plan for a schedule and across the entire spectrum of BART's network. And we basically have lots and lots of constraints. So we have to build into the process and it's my responsibility to make sure it all works.

SATHE: That's no easy task, I'm sure.

FITZGIBBON: Not really. I mean, I'm fairly new here at BART and it started just before the pandemic and had to learn a lot pretty quickly.

SATHE: Yeah. So, you're here because starting pretty soon, at least very close to when this podcast is going out, we have a new schedule coming.

FITZGIBBON: So yes, we do. September 12th is the launch date for the new schedule and looking forward to seeing that.

SATHE: That should be a lot of fun. Well, fun for maybe us here. I think it's sort of an interesting definition of fun for maybe the broader public. But the new September schedule, I know really significant changes, but maybe not one that most people will be able to notice if they don't kind of already know about what might be happening behind the scenes, right?

FITZGIBBON: That’s right. The schedule basically is mostly the same as February. What we're currently running today. However, I took it to the next level basically where we cleaned up the schedule. There are a number of places in the network where the frequency of trains isn't what it could be. And we also, based on feedback we're hearing from regional partners and from our customers, built in some new things that are very new to BART. I'm excited to see how those all play out.

SATHE: Cool. So, from what I said, it's ground up. Like you say that it's not very different, but it's entirely different. Right?

FITZGIBBON: Yeah, we started from scratch. Basically, built the schedule from closing on Sunday backwards to 8 am start time on Sunday. And the idea was to create a schedule that was more homogenous across the week, something that's new to BART. BART's generally got a completely different set of schedules weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and our regional partners and our customers have been telling us that they'd really like to see something a little more consistent across the week. We’re predictable. So, I built the schedule starting with Sunday. We have the same schedule at night around 9 p.m. until closing time. By building the Sunday schedule from the end of the day to the beginning of the day, I was able to then move that backwards over the week. So created Sunday and then created a copy of Sunday to create Saturday added to the 6 am start time on Saturday as opposed to eight on Sunday and then copied that Saturday and become the weekday and then added all the other elements that we do on weekdays where we have 15-minute headways across the day.

(Weekday train block view in scheduling software)

SATHE: That new process is going to be more predictable and more consistent, right?

FITZGIBBON: On Saturday and Sunday we basically have the same exact schedule after 8 am. We start out a little early on Saturday, but once we get to 8:00 in the morning, the schedule’s exactly the same over the course of the day. This gives our regional partners around the Bay Area a consistent place to match their bus service, which is more limited on the weekend to pulse with BART service.

SATHE: That's a huge benefit. I know that I've certainly gotten stuck myself waiting for transfers and things that are just not quite as clean. I know obviously you only get to handle BART or maybe depending on how you think about it or what day of the week it is have to handle BART rather than get to.

FITZGIBBON: We actually introduced this new schedule to our regional partners in April, so they've had it and were able to build their fall schedules based on what BART’s doing. So, I guess right now the AC Transit, as an example, started their new schedule on Sunday and it's already coordinated with the BART schedule that will happen when we start up on September 12th.

SATHE: That's great. It'll just be much cleaner transfers. And I'm sure that you have thousands and thousands of riders will maybe not specifically notice, but they'll be like, oh, man, catching the BART train much more often than before.

FITZGIBBON: Part of building the schedule to be a similar over the course of the seven days is the core 30-minute headway that is Sunday exists on Saturday and it exists all the way through during the week. So, if you're used to taking a train, say, at 8:00 in the morning from Antioch, that 8:00 train will also be there on Saturday, and it'll be on every day of the week.

It's a way to really give our customers a more consistent schedule, something that has not been really possible in the past. I think post-pandemic, we have new ways of thinking about how we want to present BART. The regionalization of transit across the Bay Area has become a very hot topic.

SATHE: Oh absolutely. I just I still can't get over, I'm a pretty frequent rider. I'm sure you are. The idea of there always being a train at, like you said, 8:00 and then 830 and then, you know, on the weekdays having an 815 and a 45 is just like four numbers to remember, two that will always be there then two for weekdays and just that reliability.

I mean, I first heard that you're making the schedule change back in the very beginning of the idea, I think we sat down and talked a little bit and it's like, oh, I can't wait. I'm like thinking about ways. Can you imagine the signage? Hey, here's when the train comes or, schedule says you know, zero, 15, 30, 45. It's so, so easy. It's just going to make it so much more I say so much more rideable. It's a very rideable system, but like even be able to understand it a lot better.

FITZGIBBON: That's the plan. It's going to be exercised on September 12th. And so far I've gotten some really good feedback. As a matter of fact, I got a customer service question just yesterday about a BART rider that lives in Dublin and commutes to Richmond and the current schedule today, there's quite a gap at Bay Ferry where that's where the transfer occurs. And so the customer said, “wouldn't it be easier if we were to flip the Orange and the Blue line both going to and coming from?” And it turns out that the new schedule already did that. When I reached out to the customer saying, here's what we've done, we took your suggestion, and we did it. Not necessarily what they asked for, but we're delivering a schedule that they asked for.

(Track view of train schedule from planning software)

I'm really excited about that. So occasionally we could we get some really good positive information. The customer was very courteous in their request for the service change, which is quite extensive. They suggested, here's ways you could do it and understood some of the fundamental considerations that we have to make. But it turns out that we actually did what they wanted and it's going to be delivered on September 12.

SATHE: That's awesome. Yeah. I'm sure they're going to be for everybody who writes in, there are thousands of people who don't who will just sort of stop grumbling to themselves or will notice. I ride pretty frequently from Berryessa up to the BART headquarters near 19th Street. We were just talking earlier, as well about how right now, one of the constraints is you want to try to produce even headways on every branch. So that's, you know, even times between trains. That's not necessarily indicative of where they're going specifically. But right now, in this schedule, I think due to other constraints elsewhere in the system, you're saying it's like two and 13 or something like that?

FITZGIBBON: Yeah. So that in addition to what I've already talked about as really important priorities in building the new schedule, the next very important priority is to even out how trains leave their terminals. And we have Green, Orange on the south end at Berryessa and then at Richmond we have Red, Orange. And so currently are the way the trains depart that a Richmond Station, for instance, are not the best.

You may have two trains that are close together and then you have to wait longer for the next train. And on the weekends, when you have 30-minute service and you have two lines running on that service, the best outcome is a 15-15. So, you have a Red line going out and then you have the Orange line 15 minutes later and then they basically just go back and forth.

In our current schedule, that's not really very good. So, I spent a lot of time to engineer the solution so that we would have much more even headways across the network. And the worst offender is on Saturday and Sunday currently in our in our schedule, the Orange line and the Green line are 4-26 so two trains basically in a row and then a giant gap to get from Berryessa all the way up to Lake Merritt before you turn in to either going to Richmond or to the city. The new solution is that it's at 12-18, so customers will be much, much happier with the way service is done down there. And of course, since our regional partner VTA is a part of the solution. We sent them our schedules earlier and they're able to match their busses so that they time better with our new schedule as well.

SATHE: That's great. I've been stuck in that 26 minute at Berryessa, but I need to get you a drink now for fixing that. Yeah, maybe we'll go to lunch after this.

FITZGIBBON: Yeah, it's something I learned early in my career to do the best you can on what's called a composite headway. So a composite headway is basically the headway of multiple trains that use the same tracks and try to even them out as even as possible.

SATHE: You know, it's a huge, huge advantage to be able to have even trains because especially like for a few of these trips, even if the train is not going directly where you're going, you'll be able to transfer somewhere else like McArthur. How important is getting that time transfer in the schedule for like when you're building not necessarily the September schedule, just any schedule from scratch?

FITZGIBBON: It is a very high priority, and we have processes in the development of the schedule that basically tell me, did I miss something? And so, it's kind of one of the first things we check. The way the schedule gets built generally is we start with the Yellow and the Orange line. Because of that plan to meet at either MacArthur on the southbound trips or at 19th Street on the on the northbound trips.

Those get built first in order to make sure the rest of the network aligns. So, I counted up this morning before we started here, we have about 18 very unique constraints in the network that have to be accounted for in order for the whole thing to work. It can be quite an engineering conundrum to actually get everything to work just perfectly.

SATHE: I'm trying to think if I can come up with any of those, if I can just take a guess at any of those constraints and I have a feeling one of them is a good friend. The Transbay Tube.

FITZGIBBON: Yes. The Transbay Tube is one of the most important constraints we have. Very important timing issues that they go through there. And in all my instructions on these constraints with regard to how far away trains can be from each other on the network at the same time comes from our Operations Control Center.

SATHE: I'd imagine that you're going to be able to pack in a few more trains once the Communications Based Train Control of the CBT project is finished up.

FITZGIBBON: Exactly. We currently have a constraint of 24 trains per hour, and we'll be able to get up to 30 trains per hour. Now coming through the tube.

SATHE: That's going to be huge. I mean, and I imagine it'll be the similar sort of 30 trains per any two track line, right? Not necessarily just the tube.

FITZGIBBON: Right but yes. Especially between Lake Merritt and Bay Fair, that's a constraint as well. And it's actually the constraint. There is one of the longest constraints we have a three-minute minimum spacing requirement between Lake Merritt and Coliseum. And so it's very important that we meet all those constraints. And talking about constraints, what's interesting is that there's so many inter moving parts at BART that if you change one thing, you'll actually cause this domino effect in a failure somewhere else. So, once you set things kind of solid, if you make a change, you may blow up some other part of the network from a scheduling perspective. It's a very interesting dynamic. It's the way BART works.

SATHE: Yeah, it's a real puzzle. I can imagine that, there's parts of my brain that are just like, man, I want to try something like this in a zero stakes scenario like If they had a Schedule BART game that you could play.

FITZGIBBON: Fortunately, we have some really good software that helps us out. It has all kinds of controls and warnings that, oops, this is not going to work. So, it helps guide me.

SATHE: That's good considering what not going to work could potentially mean in the world of moving ten car trains around at 70 miles an hour. I'm glad this has some warning there before you really do check things out like that.

FITZGIBBON: Right. So, when I introduced the schedule because that schedule drives the automated part of BART's operation, I know that it's going to meet all the requirements that are automated train operations system does.

SATHE: Just need to make sure no two trains are scheduled to be on the same track at the same time.

FITZGIBBON: Right, and that actually, that warning comes up and tells me if I've done that. So, we try to avoid it.

SATHE: Are there any times where you just like this better work and you get that warning and just like, dammit!?

FITZGIBBON: Well, yeah. It basically goes to the very small micro changes that I have to make. It will introduce a new warning saying, oops, you move that, I move the network a single trip or maybe multiple trips, 6 seconds at a time in order to hit the mark to make sure that we don't violate any of our constraints.

SATHE: It's hundreds of miles of track to have to schedule train movements down to 6 second blocks is incredible. What is your most unexpected knock on effect from that? Like, were you tweaking a train at Berryessa and all of a sudden SFO gets messed up or something like that?

FITZGIBBON: Well, it's something like that. It's not just the trains when they're moving, we have to make sure that when the trains get to their terminal, we have to make sure that they have enough time to turn around. Now, the trains don't literally turn around, but we have to have the time, the layover time in order to make the next trip depart its location on time. Moving a trip or a number of trips one way or the other may interrupt our minimum layover time at the terminal. And so that'll just be another place where that won't work. So, we have to back that up but for the most part it’s becoming a really good process for me and building a really high quality, well-engineered solution is now feeling pretty good.

SATHE: That's awesome. I know these new tools you set up let you do a lot more experimentation than the old ones, right?

FITZGIBBON: Right. Yeah, in the past, BART used fairly primitive spreadsheets and even before that paper to build the network service plan. But since then, since about 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic, the new software system was introduced into BART's options. The process is much more flexible. We are able to make changes rapidly and get those changes out to where they need to be. During the pandemic, we had a new schedule it seemed like every few months. The folklore now is that we did 25 years’ worth of schedules during the two years of the pandemic, and we're still kind of there as well. Without a software solution, we could never have done that. And the software was introduced into BART's tools as a result of many of the other maintenance programs that are currently underway in order to meet those requirements of having a changing schedule for single tracking and for all the other things that we need to do to build a network and have a maintenance issues happening. We needed a way to do that fast and with a lot of accuracy.

SATHE: How do maintenance needs affect scheduling?

FITZGIBBON: We have regular meetings across the network, across the district talking about what needs to happen, what parts of the network need to be re-engineered, replaced, fixed. And in those communications we have weekly we work with all those teams across the district and then as needed, build in special schedules for those things to happen and still meet our customers’ requirements to the best that we can.

SATHE: I know that there's sometimes I'd imagine that it's a bit frustrating when some maintenance need requires there to be uneven headways or something like that I bet

FITZGIBBON: Right. Yeah. And I guess the one that stands out the most is currently in the evenings. Most people, if they're downtown in San Francisco, notice that we have a really awful 4-26 or 2-28. It's even worse. It's the worse headway in the system at night because we have to single track through the Transbay Tube. There's a very important project that's coming to the end starting in September.

That project should be finished, and we'll have a nice 14-16-ish schedule in the evenings in San Francisco for the first time in a long time. That's great. So, folks are going to really appreciate that.

SATHE: Even headways are just the goal as well. Whenever you see a really bad, uneven headway like that, there's probably some external constraints somewhere, right? You're not just doing it just to make fun.

FITZGIBBON: No, not at all.

SATHE: Give people a hard time.

FITZGIBBON: We get a lot of negative commentary on why do these trains need to be next to each other? So, we're doing a better job in a lot of maintenance programs. You know, they come and go. And fortunately, this is a very important maintenance program, the seismic retrofit of the Transbay tube. But they're finishing that up now.

SATHE: That's great. I mean, better service, a better tube. It's like a little bit of pain. And again, I've been stuck in that too and there's been like, I feel like I should talk to John about this. But you got to know why when the other two trains come by in the other direction.

FITZGIBBON: We do get a lot of customer comments about that. The answer is always, this is why we have to do it. We apologize, but fortunately now we can now say that we're going to be able to move on and have a much better schedule starting in September.

SATHE: What would you say the most satisfying part to scheduling? Like the last piece of the puzzle you get to put in. It doesn't necessarily need to be the last.

FITZGIBBON: There are lots of moving parts and once what we call the vehicle schedule is locked down, there's other things that happen after that. I don't just build a vehicle schedule and then walk away. We then have to build a crew schedule so it's what our operators use to actually say what they're going to be doing from day-to-day across the seven-day week. So that's very satisfying that we're able to do that in a way that it gives us many opportunities to improve. In the past, before we had a software solution, we could really only have one solution because it took so much time to develop it and get it out there. Now we can actually run a solution about less than an hour. Take a look at it, figure out what we need to change, turn the dials a little bit, run it again and get a different solution. And we can do that many times. And it gives our labor partners a better solution ultimately. So we're excited about that. And we've been doing this for a couple of years now, and we're getting better and better and better at it. And we’re getting some positive feedback.

SATHE: So would you ever you know, I'm trying to stay on the theme of like really satisfying things. You have almost like a model train set view of the whole system in the scheduling software.

FITZGIBBON: Yes. So it is really fun. The first time I ran that. So basically, I can select all the entire schedule and I can just say play on a map and it opens up this giant map and the trains just run like automatically and it gives you a really good visual representation of what the trains are doing. I can run it at actual speed, which is very slow when you're looking at it from that perspective or I can run it up to 240 times, so the trains are just zipping around. But it's a really nice way to tell if there's anything I missed, I can see things kind of a little bit out and then make sure I double check that there's no issues.

SATHE: I feel like half of me wants to see this view, but the other half is like, if I had access to this, I would never get anything done. I'd just be sitting there just watch it and completely mesmerized all day. Yeah, it's like, snap yourself out of that with a timer.

FITZGIBBON: It is. You know, I will sit there and watch it play. It plays the entire day from I think our first train leaving in September is a Yellow line train from Daly City at 4:40 am, so from that time, all the way to the end of the night, you can see how everything works. It is really kind of interesting to do. And there are different components of the network that are very interesting because our planned meets at 19th Street and at MacArthur you can see the trains coming together. But I think one of the most interesting places is both Daly City and the International Airport-Millbrae. There's a huge amount of activity going on in those places on the network and in with this visualization of what's happening, you actually get to see it sped up. But it kind of gives you a really good perspective of how complex those operations are at those two locations on the network.

SATHE: Yeah, but I mean, I image, I'm trying to think of like I could just get lost in the Oakland Wye, just watching all the trains slot in and out of different spots through Oakland from downtown, from the tube.I know I can't be trusted that it's like watching the rest of my day, week, month just vanish. Like watching all the trains go around.

Before BART, you were at a bunch of different transit agencies kind of all over, right?

FITZGIBBON: Yeah, I've made my tour of North America. I've worked in Canada and on the East Coast and Los Angeles and a few other places in between. That’s just part of my career path. But for me arriving here at BART, about 2 1/2 years ago it really felt like I was in the right place at the right time.

And I'm very happy being here. I have an amazing team that I work with. We all support each other and and are doing really good work.

SATHE: Definitely. It seems like just really good work even this September schedule alone seems like really good work that you're doing. It's felt weird for me being so excited about a change that most people might not even notice. Right? But the hope is even subconsciously they'll be like, the trains are running better.

FITZGIBBON: Yeah, the trains will be running better. And I think people will notice that this weekend schedule that we started, the whole idea around it is really going to make a difference. I think people are going to see that and like, wow, that was a huge improvement.

SATHE: That's great. Hopefully less getting lucky for seeing a train coming in, more knowing when it's going to come and show up.

FITZGIBBON: Exactly.

SATHE: Obviously, we're both in public transportation now and everybody kind of takes a different path here. But for scheduling specifically, what made you think this is my this is going to be what I'm doing? Is it just like got to solve these puzzles for you, just like I can imagine your calendar before it's just perfectly sorted out with everything or?

SATHE: Well, I guess I have been a fairly organized person most of my life, but my career has actually taken a few twists and turns. I started my career out in on the planning side, working for the Metropolitan Planning Organization in San Diego. And then I went off to operations in Minneapolis, Saint Paul. I was there for 15 years and was really instrumental in making huge changes in the way business was done there. Ended up in L.A. doing a similar project, working on this similar software system, but bringing them into a new era. But then I had an opportunity to go into the scheduling side and I was invited to a job in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was able to kind of start something fresh. I fortunately had lots of folks around the industry that were helpful in getting me up to speed because it was kind of, here's what you're going to do and I didn't have a lot of experience, but I made it work. And ever since then it's become my passion. So, I've really enjoyed everything that I do and basically at BART, starting with a process that was still kind of on the old school side, it's been really fun bringing BART into the 21st century from a scheduling perspective.

SATHE: It's interesting to see how much stuff that BART's kind of recently overhauled and tried to improve. One of the things I was going to ask is of those different agencies you're talking about, as far as I know, BART's the only one with this much sort of automation. Does that make scheduling any easier, any harder? Obviously, I know we don't have to really worry about like car traffic holding up like a bus or a tram would.

FITZGIBBON: BART is fairly unique in in the level of automatic train operations that it does. It actually does make the process from a scheduling perspective easier. I don't have to worry about other kinds of constraints that may interrupt what we need to do at BART. In other places, you do have traffic and you do have all these other things that are happening, but not a BART. So from a scheduling perspective, it actually simplifies the process.

SATHE: I'm sure you know, a simpler process like that means now the other constraints just act more strongly, right?

FITZGIBBON: Right. Exactly.

SATHE: You have to make the time to meets. You have to make these because nothing gets slush time due to being held up by somebody trying to make too many left turns.

SATHE: Of everybody working at BART, you probably have the job that affects people most directly. Every single person on the system, even if they just ride from Antioch to Walnut Creek, you probably more effect on their day to day than even the GM. What does it feel like to just know that you're able to give thousands and thousands of people five, ten, 15 minutes each way each day back and to be able to affect their trip so much?

FITZGIBBON: Well, I do think about that. And I'm very proud to be able to be that person because I really do care. My focus is as much customer service as it is safety and all the other very important things at BART. But I want my customers to have the best trip that they can in a schedule that works for them. And to the extent my two-and-a-half-year tenure here at BART so far, this schedule for September is the first brand new schedule that BART has done in a very long time. And my fingerprints are deeply ingrained in it. So, I'm excited. I'm looking forward to seeing what the feedback is in a month and just really excited. We also are doing some other things to improve our customer experience. When you do a trip plan, you're going to start seeing new things that you've never seen from BART. So, a trip plan will actually include the platform that you're supposed to go to for your trip plan. Then the trip plan destination information is going to match what you see on the DSS signs. Those are the visualizations at the platforms. So, if you make a trip plan and you look up at the sign, they're going to see the same thing, which is really the best practice in order to get our customers to understand that they're on the right train, going in the right direction.

SATHE: Do you ever have to say, I know the trains can go 80, but we schedule them at 70 for wear and tear. Do you ever have to like knock them back up a few miles an hour to make something?

FITZGIBBON: No, I really don't have that ability. The trains are governed by a set of criteria that are not part of what I do. We have a standard set of how fast the trains go. We actually use time and distance, not really speed, but those both end up in to be speed. And so no, I can't cheat.

SATHE: No, that's it. Okay, so it's all by the book.

FITZGIBBON: It's all by the book. Yeah.

SATHE: Have you ever in any of your jobs, you don't have to specify which and it might not be BART scheduled your own trip home to be most convenient to you personally?

FITZGIBBON: I actually have. When I was in Minnesota, I moved into a brand-new condo complex that was really far away from the nearest bus stop and I noticed that there was a long kind of no stopping, this bus didn't have any stops the way it was routed and I basically asked the scheduling department, can you move it this way and then it comes right by my house and I can go home without having to go to work, not having a long road to walk? And they actually did it. So I influenced a bus route in those days, but yeah, that's and I have to say I live in Oakland, the Grand Lake area and I'd really like to see more Yellow Orange or Yellow Red trains to the city. So to the extent that the schedule gives us about 7 minutes apart all day long, leaving from 19th Street or MacArthur into the city it's good for me, but it's good for everybody.

SATHE:I feel like if anybody ever gave me the keys to the scheduling stuff, I'd be like, I know I need to leave now to get to work. If I can move this train a few minutes back, I can screech into work right on time.

FITZGIBBON: Right. I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it for everybody else. But I take advantage of it as well.

SATHE: Now that's great. As somebody who rides the system, just being able to make sure that benefits affect everybody that’s obviously got to be the first priority.

FITZGIBBON: Yeah, because I'm a big BART rider, so I'm happy with the schedule.

SATHE: So I think that’s about all the time we have scheduled for this and that was my best attempt at any scheduling sort of joke or pun I’ve been able to come up with while we’ve been talking. Sorry I can't do any better, but thank you very much, John, for being on. It's been a lot of fun talking about all this and hopefully not getting too deep in the weeds for everybody else. If you've made it this far, thank you so much for listening to Hidden Track Stories from BART. You can find more episodes on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or BART.gov/podcast or wherever else you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Sathe. He’s been John Fitzgibbon. This has been great. Thank you all so much and we'll see you next time.