When Tallahassee eliminated every existing bus route and replaced them with new ones in one evening nearly two years ago, "the goal was to replace the city's existing hub-and-spoke bus route system -- in which every single one of the city's bus routes led to a downtown transfer station -- with a grid-like system that more accurately reflected the population and employment clusters in Florida's capital city."
Although the city undertook five years of planning and a vigorous public outreach campaign, the transition was still jarring. According to Holeywell, "Ridership shot up 10 percent, leading to overcrowding and delays. The transit agency had a system that allowed passengers to request information on wait times via text message, but it crashed under the unprecedented number of inquiries. Officials say problems and confusion lasted for about a month before things returned to normal."
Despite the initial hiccups, as the APA's award announcement notes, the long term improvements to operations and ridership have been substantial: "The new transit system reduced transfers at the downtown terminal by 30 percent; decreased total transfers system-wide by 14 percent; decreased the number of routes that share at least one mile of service from 21 to two and increased ridership by 21 percent in December 2011."