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Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

citylab.com

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Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#11

Post by stefan_ »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #9

The bus system has to make pretty aggressive tradeoffs in order to be useful to commuters. You can't make it stop at every block in order to make it take less walking to get to the bus stop. Similarly, you can't have parallel lines a block apart. You have to limit the service area so that you can afford to run busses every 5-10 minutes. And you'll want to improve streets so that busses can run down the center and pic…

That's exactly the problem, buses can never match that. They can't have too short a route or too fast an interval, it doesn't work when you have huge variance due to personal cars, lights etc. impeding them.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#12

Post by maxharris »

craftyguy wrote: post #8
maxharris wrote: post #6

I love light rail, not the bus: http://setosa.io/bus/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching

In Portland, OR, the light rail does 'train bunching', with the exact same consequences (inconsistent schedule, overcrowded trains followed closely by empty ones, etc).

In Seattle (where I lived for three years, until just recently,) there was this dedicated bus lane. Cars for the most part stayed off of it, but the bus still had to stop at traffic lights.

Anything on rail is just way more suited to nonstop use! People in cars can (or should) more easily understand that trains/streetcars can't just start and stop just for them.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#14

Post by blang »

craftyguy wrote: post #8
maxharris wrote: post #6

I love light rail, not the bus: http://setosa.io/bus/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching

In Portland, OR, the light rail does 'train bunching', with the exact same consequences (inconsistent schedule, overcrowded trains followed closely by empty ones, etc).

Is this because the train is not grade separated?

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#16

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #4

I have mixed feelings towards the bus. The light rail is okay, the underground is great, but the bus experience is...greatly variable.

Getting to the underground platform and getting back to street level adds 5-10 mins of wasted time which the bus makes up for but the problem with buses is traffic. It’s taken me 1 hour to go a mile and a half in London more than once in areas where there is a congestion charge (toll to discourage private cars) in place.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#17

Post by SilasX »

stefan_ wrote: post #11
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #9

The bus system has to make pretty aggressive tradeoffs in order to be useful to commuters. You can't make it stop at every block in order to make it take less walking to get to the bus stop. Similarly, you can't have parallel lines a block apart. You have to limit the service area so that you can afford to run busses every 5-10 minutes. And you'll want to improve streets so that busses can run down the center and pic…

That's exactly the problem, buses can never match that. They can't have too short a route or too fast an interval, it doesn't work when you have huge variance due to personal cars, lights etc. impeding them.

They can do bus-only lanes though. Ideally, also toll the roads high enough so that the traffic is never backed up. (And, even more ideally, have no toll when when the road is below capacity.)

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#18

Post by j2kun »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #9

The bus system has to make pretty aggressive tradeoffs in order to be useful to commuters. You can't make it stop at every block in order to make it take less walking to get to the bus stop. Similarly, you can't have parallel lines a block apart. You have to limit the service area so that you can afford to run busses every 5-10 minutes. And you'll want to improve streets so that busses can run down the center and pic…

Plenty of cities (Chicago, in my experience) have parallel lines 1-2 blocks apart.

For the record, I take the transbay bus to work most days, and it's a similar deal (plus I can almost always get a seat). Slightly less convenient with the schedule (every 10 minutes instead of 5)

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#19

Post by stevehawk »

Endama wrote: post #5

I suspect the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the problems regarding public transit isn't the transit itself, but the passengers. If you had the choice of riding a public bus with a large collection of the public or paying a few bucks and selecting a preferred subset of the ridership (e.g. chariot in SF, uber, lyft, etc.) I think most will choose the non-bus option to feel comfortable during their ride. I'm not s…

No one's going to publicly agree with you, but they all do.
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