All decisions

What we chose: every route runs the same schedule every day of the year, Sundays and holidays included, from 5 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Buses come at their daytime frequency until 7 p.m. and at their evening frequency after that, the same pattern on every day. Vans cover every address overnight.

What else we considered:

• Shorter Saturday hours and a later start on Sundays, as most systems do.
• Thinner frequencies on weekends.
• Twenty-four-hour buses.

Why: an early draft had shorter Sundays and holidays. We changed it because changing the schedule by day makes the system harder for everybody. Riders have to remember which day it is, which timetable applies, and whether their bus runs at all. Hospital, retail, hospitality and factory shifts don't stop on weekends, and neither do church, family visits or a trip to the lake.

We looked hard at running buses all night. Big buses running nearly empty from 1 to 5 a.m. wouldn't be a good use of money. Vans on demand do that job better, covering the whole city at any hour at a fraction of the cost. Every line runs 5 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day, at its day rate until 7 p.m. and its evening rate after. The 5 a.m. start and the 12:30 a.m. finish catch the 2nd- and 3rd-shift changes at Kohler-area and industrial employers.

The every-day schedule does cost more than a short-weekend one, and we've updated our estimates to match. We think it's worth it: a schedule people never have to look up is part of what makes the system easy.

Changing the schedule by day makes the system harder for everybody.

Next decision: 3. A grid of frequent lines, not a hub-and-spoke