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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?

#81

Post by g_sch »

JackFr wrote: post #53
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 limi…

It's true that the M14 is special right now because it's currently serving riders of the L train, but the proposal to eliminate stops is part of the citywide Bus Action Plan that is being rolled out progressively by borough. Staten Island already redesigned its bus system, and IIRC the Bronx is next.

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

#82

Post by sparrc »

In Seattle we have and are currently expanding a system of "RapidRide" buses. These appear to have an average stop distance of around 0.3 miles (~500 meters)

Wikipedia claims that RapidRide routes have on average 40% fewer stops than the 'regular' line that they replaced, which would mean the 'regular' buses have stops about every 300 meters.

Anecdotally, I lived in London for a few years and now live in Seattle, and I would say these number's all roughly match my experience. Seattle's stops are spaced quite a bit further apart, but Seattle is also much less dense :)

see https://www.theurbanist.org/2018/03/26/rainier-rapidride-met... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidRide

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

#84

Post by CydeWeys »

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…

Annual ridership figures != people. For stops that are primarily commuter stops you have to divide by hundreds to get the actual person figure. 10k people using any given stop for one round trip twice per day is over 7M annual rides for that one stop. It's actually less than that for 18th St; using real data, the average daily ridership for is 8.6k. Compare with a station that is actually busy, like Union Square, which gets 109k daily ridership. Figures from https://graphics.wsj.com/table/NYRIDER_0420

So yeah, those people would be inconvenienced by having to walk a few more blocks, but way, way more people would experience greater convenience by having faster commutes along those very busy lines since they wouldn't need to make such close stops.

There's a happy medium between too many stops and too few. Two stops within a quarter of a mile is way too many. You can imagine a subway system in which a north/south line stopped at literally every block; you'd probably still have more than a thousand daily riders at every stop, but that's no argument to keep every single one of those stops (or even worse, build them). The system performance would be terrible and it'd take forever to get anywhere. The same is still true when you have stops that are only four short blocks away from each other.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

JackFr wrote: post #79
robrenaud wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In American English, blocks are deliminated by roads and mostly used in dense urban environments, often where the blocks are rectangular.

Etymology note: The word 'blockbuster' was coined by the press to describe the largest conventional bombs used by the RAF in WWII, because they could destroy a city block.

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by JackFr »

CydeWeys wrote: post #84
JackFr wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Annual ridership figures != people. For stops that are primarily commuter stops you have to divide by hundreds to get the actual person figure. 10k people using any given stop for one round trip twice per day is over 7M annual rides for that one stop. It's actually less than that for 18th St; using real data, the average daily ridership for is 8.6k. Compare with a station that is actually busy, like Union Square, whi…

I know how the ridership is measured. I’m not sure what your point was. It’s also not surprising that the busiest stations have 10x as many riders as those less busy.

The four track system of the NYC Subway was its most important innovation, and it literally solved the problem your talking about. You don’t want all the stops? Walk to 14th and take the express.

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

#87

Post by Wowfunhappy »

School-Cotton wrote: post #58
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry, shouldn't have framed that as a question directed at you specifically. :)

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

#88

Post by euske »

Tokyo. The average distance between stops on major streets are about 200 to 400m here, except some busy areas.

https://busmap.info/map/?q=%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%83%BD%E6%96...

As you can imagine, buses are just as amazing as trains in Tokyo. They're sometimes running late, but only up to a few minutes. And often they come at the exact time. (There's a time table for every bus stop.) Most buses are accessible and there are a lot of elderly people using it. (Age 70 or older can get a free pass.) When there was a once-in-a-decade snowfall last year, they delayed about 10 minutes, and that was morning rush hours. Again, they do absolutely fantastic job here.

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

#89

Post by ghaff »

Theodores wrote: post #68
dintech wrote: post #10

It's obviously density related, even in London.

It is also obvious that nobody on HN lives in the sticks. Or, if they do, then they drive and therefore have precisely zero interest in bus stops. My country dwelling parents have a bus stop outside their door. There is one bus per day - weekdays only - and that is only in one direction. This I find mind-boggling. A shopping trip would require an overnight stay in town and for a full circuit of the route to be comple…

That does seem extreme. That said, a lot of small town and semi-rural public transit seems to operate at a level where it's marginally better than nothing but not much better for those who have alternatives.

Around the exurbs/adjacent small city where I live, there is a small bus service that connects the Walmart, commuter rail, city center, etc. But I'd be pretty sure it's mostly used by those who can't drive.

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

#90

Post by traek »

JackFr wrote: post #86
CydeWeys wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annual ridership figures != people. For stops that are primarily commuter stops you have to divide by hundreds to get the actual person figure. 10k people using any given stop for one round trip twice per day is over 7M annual rides for that one stop. It's actually less than that for 18th St; using real data, the average daily ridership for is 8.6k. Compare with a station that is actually busy, like Union Square, whi…

I know how the ridership is measured. I’m not sure what your point was. It’s also not surprising that the busiest stations have 10x as many riders as those less busy. The four track system of the NYC Subway was its most important innovation, and it literally solved the problem your talking about. You don’t want all the stops? Walk to 14th and take the express.

> I know how the ridership is measured. I’m not sure what your point was.

Probably that it's inaccurate for you to say "the 4.5 million people who use the 28th Street stop" because that number is ridership, not people.

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