Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever • Hacker News Board

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#161

Post by abainbridge » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

downer68 wrote: post #126

Buses fucking suck. Buses make you wait in the rain. Buses get stuck in traffic very easily. Buses create traffic and make it worse with their size. Buses idle diesel fumes as they stand in traffic. Buses are noisy and idle outside of homes. Bus stops in front of homes are filled with noisy people. Buses that permit requested stops go nowhere slower than ever. Buses are a half measure. Buses fucking suck.

And, where I'm from (Cambridge, UK), they also:

Are more expensive than driving.

Are regulated in such a way that prevents a competitive market.

Are run by profit making companies that demand subsidies from government.

Don't run at night.

Are full at rush hour.

Spend ages at the bus stop while everyone buys tickets, argues with the driver, asks which bus this is etc etc.

A single ticket can't be used on buses from two different companies.

I cycle. The buses seem like a threat to my safety because they are too big to overtake safely on a busy street. Also their engines are at the back, so I can't hear when they're sneaking up behind me.

Once they don't need a driver and are electric, most of these problems could be solved. I'll re-assess then.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#162

Post by GordonS » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:10 AM UTC

megablast wrote: post #160

komali2 wrote: post #7

Me: I would ride the bus if it was available more than once every 30 minutes. At this point it's faster for me to Uber. City councilmember: why should we allocate even more funds to the busses? Nobody's riding them!

It will always be faster to uber, what a ridiculous thing to say.

Not true - lots of cities have bus lanes that can only be used by buses. Depending on traffic congestion, at times it could well be quicker to take the bus.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#163

Post by adrianN » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:14 AM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #78

reaperducer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Lots of cities have found ways around this. Express buses with dedicated rights-of-way in Pittsburgh, for example. Or Chicago's 146 Outer Drive Express and J14 Jeffrey Jump routes are also good examples. Too often the biggest problem with buses getting around isn't t…

Which itself is a symptom of infrastructure not meeting capacity. If there were enough parking people wouldn't park illegally.

If there were no free surface parking every road would magically gain two lanes, e.g. for buses or bikes. Or you could use all that space to increase density. See for example how it works in Tokyo.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#164

Post by MagnumOpus » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:22 AM UTC

subpixel wrote: post #140

paulgerhardt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citylab's push here is in response to South American cities doing exactly that with great success[1]. Initially developed in Curitaba, follow on initiatives in Bogota have been very popular[2]. Basically, treat the bus like a metro. Give them their own lane. Make sure the platform is level with pickup. And you've got a massively cost down subway system. For an inspiring documentary you should check this[3] video out.…

The transmillenio is a mess: https://thebogotapost.com/2017/04/06/transmilenio-transport-...

Though it sounds like less of a mess than the wildcat jitneys and segmented bus companies that came before...

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#165

Post by jon-wood » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:40 AM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #146

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…

I wonder if we couldn't have a "business class" option. When I took Muni in SF every day I'd have happily paid a little extra for some more comfort and less likelihood of a homeless person who smells like urine nearby. That money could even be used to subsidize the economy tickets. Maybe it might even work out that we could have a freemium model.

There’s little that irritates me more about my local trains than the fact every one of them has ~20% of carriages dedicated to first class at a huge markup. If they had capacity I’d be fine, but what happens is that you have people standing for a 2 hour journey while there’s empty seats that they’re not allowed to go and sit on.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#166

Post by kpil » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:42 AM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #106

kpil wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of works for Venice, it's so nice to be in a car free town with a slow but nice public transport (the vaporettos) so I started to dream about if it would be possible to a similar thing with buses, combined with the existing subway and trams, and just exile all cars. The thing is that where I live, the bus network is heavily funded and I'm suspecting that it's probably operating already with too little efficie…

"Further, large diesel engines running heavy start-stop duty cycles like buses probably generates unproportionally more particles than just about everything else." The good news: electric busses are coming. City busses will be huge winners from electrification, both for economic and environmental reasons. Greatly reduced fuel and maintenance costs, improved ride quality, less noise and pollution.

It seems to me that it's mostly dust from the road - busses are heavy, have larger tyres and wider track width.

Combined with the fact that the roads are heavily sanded and salted half of the year, and that they are swept rather than washed, for some reason often only once in the year, the roads are dirty.

I know that other cities wash the streets more or less constantly, but here they claim it won't help which seems questionable to me.

Winter tyres with studs are allowed here (in the winter) and are getting a lot of attention since they generate a lot of particles in laboratory tests - but it would be interesting to see what 3 months of grinding sand and salt in snow slush with heavy weight wheels will generate, with or without studs.

But yes : electric busses would be nice. With a soft driving filter applied...

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#167

Post by jon-wood » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #34

> such as L.A. and Denver, are watching transit ridership decline across the board, in part because investment in buses has trailed so far behind the commitment to trains That's not completely true for LA (and for the record, train ridership in LA is on decline as well, while the population is growing). Here's the actual reason http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-metro-homeless-2018... "People looking for warm,…

This and the replies honestly make me think there are far deeper problems than public transit in play here. In the UK I’ve never in my life seen someone defacate in public, or encountered the result. The worst I usually encounter on public transport is someone who smells bad, or is a bit weird, and the very worst drunk passengers throwing up on late night trains.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#168

Post by StudentStuff » Thu, May 10, 2018, 7:53 AM UTC

jschwartzi wrote: post #25

maxharris wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are lots of those in Seattle and King County. They even close down an entire avenue during rush hour and turn it into a bus-only street.

Dedicated lanes and roads help, but light rail is significantly faster than buses & more reliable. It is a huge reason why we're investing in building Light Rail out to the outer reaches of Seattle.

With Light Rail, you are essentially buying people part of their lives back in the form of a shorter commute. That is quite important, as time spent driving in traffic is pretty well wasted.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#169

Post by pgtan » Thu, May 10, 2018, 8:01 AM UTC

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…

> You can't make it stop at every block

a solution for this is kind of "stop on demand"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshrutka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#170

Post by jstanley » Thu, May 10, 2018, 8:11 AM UTC

dbasedweeb wrote: post #87

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In warm and dry parts of the world with good roads. All you need are good roads. Bicycling in the winter in Helsinki or – even further north – Oulu is completely mainstream. People know how to dress for the outdoors, and as long as the bike lanes are cleared of snow, cycling is not viewed as the major inconvenience that people in warmer countries expect it to be.

“All you need are good roads.” That’s a Big expensive undertaking. In Canada (which is ever so slightly bigger than Finland) the roads range from excellent to abysmal. In the US the roads often have potholes and little accommodation for cycles, and the U.K. has some of the worst roads I’ve seen outside of a developing nation. Finland is also a small country with a population which all lives in the same climate. Count…

FWIW, I live in the UK. The roads are fine for cycling and the cyclepaths are excellent.

There is a "National Cycle Network" of cyclepaths and roads that are exceptionally well-suited to cycling (low traffic etc.), and it is signposted well.

(But, again, I hadn't noticed any of this until after I got the bike).

https://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map