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Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

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Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#51

Post by School-Cotton »

cletus wrote: post #31
g_sch wrote: post #14

In NYC, it depends heavily on the bus line. Some stop nearly every block (which can be as little as every 100m) whereas some have more widely-spaced stops. The buses here are notorious for running very slowly (and thus behind schedule), and one of the proposals to speed some some slow buses is to eliminate stops on lines where they are densely clustered. It's become a subject of considerable debate, as residents and…

I was going to mention NYC too but in terms of the Subway, which is related. The "local" stops on a lot of Subway lines really shouldn't be there. I'm looking at you 18th Street, 28th Street, 50th Street and so on. 18th Street in particular is 4 blocks away (where 1 block = In the other direction 23rd Street is 5 blocks away. The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is sp…

When I visited Shanghai, I noticed that late at night when there are not many passengers, they will kick everybody off the train at a random stop. They do this with a few trains in a row until there are enough people waiting in the station to fill up a train to some acceptable level.

I assume that the point of consolidating everybody into one train like this is so they can avoid wasting power decelerating/accelerating on a bunch of trains. I.e. just run all the empty ones to the terminus without stopping.

It was a bit annoying whenever it happened to us, but I think this is a better system than getting rid of heavily used local stops entirely.

Edit: As a reply explains, it's possible my description is slightly inaccurate.

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#52

Post by eli »

cafard wrote: post #17

In Washington, DC, the distance varies considerably, but 200m sounds about right for the average. WMATA does have a "next bus" service that I see people using.

Notably there are also several "MetroExtra" buses that run similar routes as popular bus lines but make about 1/3 as many stops and are therefore much faster.

The NextBus service DC uses is clearly using a very naive algorithm that is often (consistently) too fast or slow. Some of the better apps modify it or add their own data.

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#53

Post by JackFr »

g_sch wrote: post #14

In NYC, it depends heavily on the bus line. Some stop nearly every block (which can be as little as every 100m) whereas some have more widely-spaced stops. The buses here are notorious for running very slowly (and thus behind schedule), and one of the proposals to speed some some slow buses is to eliminate stops on lines where they are densely clustered. It's become a subject of considerable debate, as residents and…

There's an important distinction to be made here -- in Manhattan, in general, there are crosstown buses and buses which go uptown or downtown. And there are 2 kinds of 'block' in Manhattan, 'long blocks' are crosstown (east/west) and 'short blocks' which are north/south. Long blocks are irregular depending on where you are, and are typically much longer than short blocks ~3x.

Most uptown and downtown buses offer limited and local service, with limited making far fewer stops. Most crosstown buses stop at every block.

One more confounding factor is that about decade ago, the city replaced many crosstown buses with fewer but much larger articulated buses without realizing that the behavior of fewer larger buses is to make the average ride slower because of the time spent receiving passengers. To address that they created a new system for paying on certain buses involving buying a ticket before you board. But that is resulting in skyrocketing levels of fare evasion. Unintended consequences.

The M14 is a special case right now because of limited service on the L train (which runs under 14th street) due to necessary repairs. The M14 is getting swamped with excess people who normally would prefer the subway.

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#55

Post by Wowfunhappy »

School-Cotton wrote: post #51
cletus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to mention NYC too but in terms of the Subway, which is related. The "local" stops on a lot of Subway lines really shouldn't be there. I'm looking at you 18th Street, 28th Street, 50th Street and so on. 18th Street in particular is 4 blocks away (where 1 block = In the other direction 23rd Street is 5 blocks away. The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is sp…

When I visited Shanghai, I noticed that late at night when there are not many passengers, they will kick everybody off the train at a random stop. They do this with a few trains in a row until there are enough people waiting in the station to fill up a train to some acceptable level. I assume that the point of consolidating everybody into one train like this is so they can avoid wasting power decelerating/acceleratin…

Would this really save much efficiency versus the much less disruptive option of taking the trains out of commission (for the evening/morning/etc) when they get to the end of their route?

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#56

Post by alkonaut »

Stockholm: Distances vary between different line types, e.g. the backbones lines 1..4 are a different type of backbone transit offering shorter travel times by having longer distances between stops (.5-1km) and shorter invervals between buses. Regular inner city buses have shorter distances.

The free API is fantastic. I'd be willing to bet it's the most comprehensive public API for city public transport in the world (Happy to be proven wrong though!).

As an example This API endpoint is for stops and lines. https://www.trafiklab.se/api/sl-hallplatser-och-linjer-2

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#57

Post by JackFr »

cletus wrote: post #31
g_sch wrote: post #14

In NYC, it depends heavily on the bus line. Some stop nearly every block (which can be as little as every 100m) whereas some have more widely-spaced stops. The buses here are notorious for running very slowly (and thus behind schedule), and one of the proposals to speed some some slow buses is to eliminate stops on lines where they are densely clustered. It's become a subject of considerable debate, as residents and…

I was going to mention NYC too but in terms of the Subway, which is related. The "local" stops on a lot of Subway lines really shouldn't be there. I'm looking at you 18th Street, 28th Street, 50th Street and so on. 18th Street in particular is 4 blocks away (where 1 block = In the other direction 23rd Street is 5 blocks away. The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is sp…

> The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is spent accelerating so every stop counts.

The entire MTA spends less than $500 million on electricity annually (which includes the subway, Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth commuter rail) of a roughly $17 billion dollar budget.

Additionally, the 4.5 million people who use the 28th Street stop on the 1 line and the 6.7 million people who use the 28th Street on the 6 line and the 3.3 million people who use the 28th Street stop on the R/W lines politely disagree with you.

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#58

Post by School-Cotton »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #55
School-Cotton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I visited Shanghai, I noticed that late at night when there are not many passengers, they will kick everybody off the train at a random stop. They do this with a few trains in a row until there are enough people waiting in the station to fill up a train to some acceptable level. I assume that the point of consolidating everybody into one train like this is so they can avoid wasting power decelerating/acceleratin…

Would this really save much efficiency versus the much less disruptive option of taking the trains out of commission (for the evening/morning/etc) when they get to the end of their route?

I'm really not an expert on subways, so I don't know. But I can only assume that the people who run the Shanghai metro know what they're doing.

Re: Ask HN: How close together are your bus stops?

#59

Post by darkmighty »

JackFr wrote: post #57
cletus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to mention NYC too but in terms of the Subway, which is related. The "local" stops on a lot of Subway lines really shouldn't be there. I'm looking at you 18th Street, 28th Street, 50th Street and so on. 18th Street in particular is 4 blocks away (where 1 block = In the other direction 23rd Street is 5 blocks away. The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is sp…

> The Subway spends billions of dollars a year on power. Most of that power (for trains) is spent accelerating so every stop counts. The entire MTA spends less than $500 million on electricity annually (which includes the subway, Long Island Railroad and MetroNorth commuter rail) of a roughly $17 billion dollar budget. Additionally, the 4.5 million people who use the 28th Street stop on the 1 line and the 6.7 million…

Moreover, if power becomes significant you can add regenerative breaking to regain a large fraction of energy (if they're not doing so already; maybe not because of the age of the trains).
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