So, given that Phoenix, Denver, and Vegas already have spacing similar to European nations do they see the benefits that the author is suggesting?
Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
71–80 of 656 posts
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't wanna be rude but when someone spends months researching an issue, which systems work and which don't, you should probably give some level of grace and understand how they came to those numbers rather than spit out your first mindless critique.
I ride the bus and I can tell you right now that I would be pissed if this guy took away my bus stop. That's my critique. I think it's perfectly valid.
You would be pissed that you have to walk for an extra 2 minutes? I wouldn't, but sure. Would you also be pissed about overall bus travel time decreasing by a generous amount?
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#73> Bus stop balancing saves riders’ time. Riders save between 12 and 24 seconds per stop removed. I wonder if this savings includes the additional time to walk further to a stop. Especially in light of this quote: > In England, where 28 percent of all bus passengers are on concessionary fares for age or disability
It depends on how long you are on the bus. It cost a few minutes, but a couple miles on the but makes up for the lost time. So for short trips where healty people should walk or bike it slows things down but for longer trips it is faster.
Both NYC and London have express buses that skip stops.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#74> Bus stop balancing saves riders’ time. Riders save between 12 and 24 seconds per stop removed. I wonder if this savings includes the additional time to walk further to a stop. Especially in light of this quote: > In England, where 28 percent of all bus passengers are on concessionary fares for age or disability
Easily. Going from 700 -> 1000 ft spacing adds 150 feet of walking (x2 for both sides of the trip). That's about 1 minute. Over a mile you'd reduce the number of stops by 2.2. So above 2 miles it's faster even for the lower end of that range of savings.
And that doesn't even consider that a faster bus route means you need fewer buses to run the same number of trips, so you can either run more trips (and save even more time for riders waiting for their bus) or cut down costs for the transit operator.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#75As someone who rides the bus: it's payment that causes slowdowns. Waiting for everyone to get on the front of the bus and tap often takes multiple traffic cycles. If we wanted to treat public transit as a true public good (as it ought to be), it should be funded from taxes and free at point of service, and then front and back can be used. But that'd be too much efficiency and cost the rich too much. This article feel…
That is an accepted issue among bus planners. One solution, I think used at least in part of NYC is to pay at the bus stop, before you board. Related is enforcing boarding and paying in front and leaving via the back door, so the leavers don't delay the boarders.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#76Give buses signal priority and their own lanes. This would dramatically speed up bus service. However, nobody wants to slow down cars, hence buses will always be a worse option.
Signal Priority only works well if the arrival time of the bus can be predicted some time before arrival at the signal (~30 seconds is a number I've heard a few times). As bus stopping times are highly unpredictable, a lower number of bus stops makes signal priority work much better (and far-side bus stops).
Furthermore signal priority and own lanes are almost always beaten by good circulation planning, reducing the number of traffic lights and cars on the route of the bus.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't wanna be rude but when someone spends months researching an issue, which systems work and which don't, you should probably give some level of grace and understand how they came to those numbers rather than spit out your first mindless critique.
Whenever I see an article, and the top comment is StudMan69 saying "Uh, no, the article's conclusions are all wrong!" I think to myself: "Gosh! If only the article's author had consulted StudMan69 before writing the article, he could have avoided making such a grave mistake!
When the article is by StudMan420 I don't feel that way.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't wanna be rude but when someone spends months researching an issue, which systems work and which don't, you should probably give some level of grace and understand how they came to those numbers rather than spit out your first mindless critique.
I ride the bus and I can tell you right now that I would be pissed if this guy took away my bus stop. That's my critique. I think it's perfectly valid.
what if they removed only 33% of the stops?
so per 3 stops, one is removed and the remaining were rearranged.
it might even happen that the new bus stop is closer to your house.
i agree, for the average person, the distance to the stop increases though.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#79> increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet [...] to 1,300 feet I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership. This feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Also, the example given cites New York City buses. But New York City is always the worst example because it's the most extreme of everything. The vast majority of US cities do not s…
> I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership.
Oh do you now? Where do these suspicions come from? How much time do you spend on city busses? Do you have any idea how absolutely infuriating it is to be sitting on a bus while it makes stop, after stop, after stop, after stop, every single one a block or two apart, crawling down the road at a walking pace? All the while backing up traffic behind it and eroding whatever support the transit system had with the majority of the tax-paying public that never uses it.
I suspect that people find a destination on Google Maps, click the navigate button, see that the bus takes 3x as long as driving, and take their car or an Uber.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I ride the bus and I can tell you right now that I would be pissed if this guy took away my bus stop. That's my critique. I think it's perfectly valid.
Only because you know your loss but cannot imagine your gains in time.
So 1/Nth of the ridership is gonna have their stop deleted at a sum total of X man years. But it's all gonna be worth it based on a projected possible upside that may not materialize dependent upon many factors?
This is even worse than the usual slight of hand wherein one takes a widely diffuse hard to quantify cost and rounds it to zero and then dishonestly acts as though that justifies implementing their pet policy that has some small upside because in this case the downside is known and the upside is less defined.
I'm open to the idea that we could improve the system by deleting stops, but in light of a quantifiable downside I don't see a convincing argument without having some quantification on what the upside looks like.