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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?

#31

Post by cletus »

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 spent accelerating so every stop counts.

I expect the same people who are against consolidation of bus stops are against consolidation of Subway stops.

Honestly I personally have never taken a bus in NYC despite living here for nearly a decade. Distances in Manhattan are just so relatively short.

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

#32

Post by jonsen »

eequah9L wrote: post #29

Prague Per [0] (2001; in Czech), average distance between subway stations is 1038m, tram stops 500m and bus stops 698m. A related metric is walking distance from home to public transportation stop. Per [1] (2011; in Czech), most of people in the city need to walk less than 5 minutes to reach a stop. (There's a table with a breakdown by walking time and city part in chapter 7.) The same work cites average walking spee…

walking speed as 88.69 m/s

cm/s ?

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

#33

Post by cjbos »

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…

50th seems a bit of an anomaly in your list? Otherwise there would be no stop between 42nd and Columbus Circle (I assume you mean the AC line?)

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

#34

Post by ghaff »

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…

I'm guessing you have no physical issues and don't think twice about walking 10 blocks. I (usually) don't either but that doesn't describe everyone and am able to just grab a cab or a Lyft if not.

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

#35

Post by LargeWu »

ghaff wrote: post #34
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…

I'm guessing you have no physical issues and don't think twice about walking 10 blocks. I (usually) don't either but that doesn't describe everyone and am able to just grab a cab or a Lyft if not.

There are always going to be competing interests and tradeoffs. Stopping the train is expensive, in terms of time. If one wants to be most accommodating for those with physical issues, then the cost of that is slower or less frequent trains.

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

#36

Post by gibolt »

jonsen wrote: post #32
eequah9L wrote: post #29

Prague Per [0] (2001; in Czech), average distance between subway stations is 1038m, tram stops 500m and bus stops 698m. A related metric is walking distance from home to public transportation stop. Per [1] (2011; in Czech), most of people in the city need to walk less than 5 minutes to reach a stop. (There's a table with a breakdown by walking time and city part in chapter 7.) The same work cites average walking spee…

walking speed as 88.69 m/s cm/s ?

Czech your math. People there are blazing fast :)

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

#38

Post by 3JPLW »

In US cities, the densest lines will have one stop per "block" — and that's frequently a regular tenth or eighth of a mile (and more regular as you move towards the newer cities in the west). So you'll typically find minimum distances of 160m or 200m and then multiples of those for express lines or less dense areas.

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

#39

Post by 3JPLW »

gok wrote: post #37

In Chicago, there are 1,536 route miles and 10,768 stops, suggesting average spacing is about 230 meters. I'm not sure if that double counts stops that serve multiple routes but it sounds about right.

Wow, that's almost exactly what I would have guessed. The block distance in Chicago is 1/8th mile (200m).

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

#40

Post by ashurov »

mtmail wrote: post #11

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Transit_Feed_Specifica... is the most used file format. Public transport companies used to submit their information to Google Maps and similar (the 'G' used to stand for 'Google'). You can find those searching for 'GTFS ' in various open data portals. Alternatively OpenStreetMap is a huge global dataset. Buses are a small part of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Public_transpo…

I was involved in a project where we could identify Transit deserts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_desert). Sadly the new administration cancelled this project. We were using GTFS data and US Census data to identify these. Quite interesting stuff. Perhaps the OP is interested in that as well.
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