Fast Transit Program

The Fast Transit Program is an agency-wide effort to make transit faster, more reliable, and ultimately more useful for Santa Clara County travelers.

The program is identifying where and how transit priority, streamlining, and policy changes can benefit service throughout the system, with a focus on VTA's most frequent routes. Such improvements can help make transit an attractive mode choice for people to travel to work, school, and daily needs, and can also help Santa Clara County cities meet their mobility goals all while helping to reduce VTA’s operating costs. 

The Program has three major components:

1. The development and adoption of a transit speed policy that represents VTA’s commitment to work internally and with local jurisdictions to improve transit speed and reliability (completed 2019)
2. An examination of the causes of VTA’s declining speeds and reliability (completed 2019)
3. A program of context-sensitive short- and long-term speed improvement projects 

Why does VTA need the Fast Transit Program?

VTA’s average transit speed is slowing

The average speed of VTA’s transit vehicles has declined 20% over the past 30 years. When transit speeds decline, on-time reliability suffers, and transit becomes less appealing to riders.

Furthermore, slowing routes become increasingly more expensive to operate since VTA must add more buses and trains to maintain the same frequency of service. This is especially concerning on VTA’s highest ridership routes in the frequent network, which are among the slowest in the system, particularly during peak periods. If the average speed of the frequent network improves by just 1 mile per hour, it would reduce annual operating costs by over $15M per year.

Causes of slowing speeds

While increased congestion slows down transit the same way it impacts low capacity vehicles, transit vehicles suffer from many other sources of delay that compound along the route and are difficult to recover from such as frequent stopping to pick up and drop off passengers, then merging back into traffic or waiting at signals to access a bus stop.

Solutions for slowing speeds

Speeding up transit requires a multi-pronged approach across the frequent network to address the many different sources of delay that compound along a transit route. We identified a suite of complementary strategies to help reduce the different sources of delay that, over time, should maximize speed improvements. VTA is working with local jurisdictions to explore and implement some of these tools, such as transit signal priority to help provide more green lights for buses; balance bus stop spacing to efficiently pick up and drop off passengers, expedite boarding to reduce the time spent at a stop, and bus lanes to help move buses through the most congested areas. Ultimately, success of faster transit relies on close coordination and partnership with the cities in which VTA operates..

Speed improvement projects in progress

Transit Signal Priority
VTA is working closely with 11 of its 16 local jurisdictions to plan and deploy a centralized transit signal priority (TSP) system that will improve transit speed and reliability on VTA’s core routes and advance equity, particularly among disadvantaged communities. This Transit Reliability Improvement and Performance System (TRIPS) in Santa Clara County will make it possible to deploy TSP quickly and cost-effectively across the four different types of traffic signal controllers used by the 16 cities where VTA operates. The project will help reduce traffic delay, improve reliability, provide better transfers, enhance the customer experience, improve access to jobs and services, and optimize intersection efficiency to reduce traffic delay, and thereby help meet State and local greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals.

Bus Stop Balancing
When bus stops are too close together, the speed of a transit trip decreases. The Bus Stop Balancing project aims to create speed improvements for faster, more reliable transit. Bus stop balancing will identify stops that are too close together and balance bus stops based on VTA’s Transit Service Guidelines. For optimal speed and access, there should generally be four to five bus stops per mile. Stops that are too close together cause unnecessary delay for our riders.

For more information about the Bus Stop Balancing Program, click here.

Expedited Boarding – 

In 2024, VTA will work with the community to identify barriers to non-cash forms of fare payment, such as Clipper card, and develop policy changes and projects that could help remove the barriers. More information coming soon. 

Bus Lanes – 

VTA is partnering with City of San Jose to implement quick-build bus lanes on 6 miles of Monterey Corridor between Alma and Ford Rd. The project is fully funded through construction and expected to complete in 2026. For more information, please visit this webpage created by the City of San Jose. 

Board Memos

• May 3, 2018 VTA Board of Directors Meeting – Item 6.21 Fast Transit Program
• March 7, 2019 VTA Board of Directors Meeting – Item 6.2 Transit Speed Policy
• April 4, 2019 VTA Board of Directors Meeting – Item #6.21 Fast Transit Program Speed and Reliability Methodology