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Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

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Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#121

Post by amiga386 »

petcat wrote: post #19

> 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…

New York City already has fewer bus stops, or rather it has express buses that stop at fewer stops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Select_Bus_Service

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#122

Post by ipdashc »

krzyk wrote: post #100
petcat wrote: post #19

> 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…

When I was in SF, my European mind was astonished why bus stops are so often (and why there is a cable to pull, but that's a different thing). Considering that the area was less populated than my city. And we also have speedbuses that stop every second or third bus stop. It was unreal. In my city bus stops have 1km between them (sometimes it is 700m sometimes 1.3km) so about 3200 feet. It is about 15min walk between…

> and why there is a cable to pull, but that's a different thing

Huh... How is it set up where you live? I've ridden buses in Europe and I remember them having cables, or at least buttons.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#123

Post by the_sleaze_ »

janalsncm wrote: post #118

I believe the central thesis of this article is unsupported, and other assertions are false. One, the article asserts that too many stops is the main cause of low ridership in the US. I didn’t even see a correlation (which would still not prove one causes the other) between number of stops and ridership. This is the central thesis of the article. Two, removing stops will likely not make the remaining stops nicer. Cit…

Why have bus stops at all, waymo should build a transit bus or large van and run them autonomously. Then they could optimize the fleet as they please. Bus stops were a solution to a lack of connectivity and demand.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#124

Post by InitialLastName »

knuckleheads wrote: post #38

>Many of the solutions to these problems require money – running more buses, improving stop amenities, or upgrading signals – or the political will to take away street space for busways and transit lanes. But stop balancing can have a meaningful impact on these issues for a fraction of the price. To me, this exemplifies a type of thinking that is endemic to policymakers in the US. We can tinker at the edges, we can u…

That level of risk aversion has been burned into policymakers, especially at the local level. Wasting taxpayer money by letting an inefficient system continue to degrade makes less news than doing so by investing in a risk that failed, and gets a lot fewer people screaming at you in public and sending you death threats.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#125

Post by michaelmrose »

lavelganzu wrote: post #94
miltonlost wrote: post #33

As 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…

There is a downside of making buses free, similar to the experience of cities which stopped enforcing "turnstile hopping" for trains, which is that it attracts a small number of hostile and malicious riders. An advantage of treating transit as a public good means this downside becomes an empirical question, not a moral one: Which approach leads to more ridership? In some cases, enforcing fares leads to more ridership…

Let's use Seattle as an example. We tap orca cards to pay to get on and recently debit cards. This doesn't in fact keep the crazy people from getting on without paying at all. Only cops/security actually prevent this and most of the time we do a whole lot of nothing.

We could offer free ridership but still use orca cards and ban people who misbehave or befoul the place. Whether we keep problem children off appears to be wholly orthogonal.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#126

Post by jonbaer »

michaelmrose wrote: post #113
jonbaer wrote: post #68

We need smarter dynamic fares, it shouldn't be a $6 flat tax on all destinations. I think this hurts local businesses, or all local (non business) residents should automatically get half fare.

Since it is already mostly paid for by taxes why not just make it free.

Didn't realize some cities had voted it in post-COVID, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#127

Post by janalsncm »

stetrain wrote: post #85
petcat wrote: post #19

> 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…

There are two groups of people that you can optimize for. One is the group of people who already rides the bus. In most US cities this is a small group of people who have no real alternative. The other is the group of people who might ride the bus if it were convenient. Not just in terms of accessibility to a stop, but also accounting for the journey time. If someone tries riding the bus and finds that a 20 minute dr…

In my experience, the problem was long wait times between buses and unreliable pickup times. That meant you realistically had to add buffer at each end of your trip: in case the bus was early and in case the bus was late. Not only was that more than 20% of my trip time, it was also mental overhead of worrying whether you already missed the bus.

The bus might come 2x per hour. Maybe 2:18 and 2:48. But it might come at 2:15 or 2:25. So you need to arrive at 2:13 and possibly wait 12 minutes. Or if you arrive late you might be waiting 30+ minutes.

Make the buses fast and safe.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#128

Post by epolanski »

janalsncm wrote: post #118

I believe the central thesis of this article is unsupported, and other assertions are false. One, the article asserts that too many stops is the main cause of low ridership in the US. I didn’t even see a correlation (which would still not prove one causes the other) between number of stops and ridership. This is the central thesis of the article. Two, removing stops will likely not make the remaining stops nicer. Cit…

As an European I don't mind buses at all. I neither feel unsafe nor I find them dirty.

A single bus carries on average 20 times the people cars occupying the same space would (as you rarely get more than 1 person per car in peak hours).

I'd rather take buses than the car in any city. Cars make cities dangerous, noisy, polluted, congestions make people nervous behind the wheel, fights are far from uncommon. Finding parking, paying for it is another issue, common in Europe where (luckily) city centers are often millenia older than cars.

At no point of me living in the US I found the car-centric model anywhere better.

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#129

Post by culi »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #123
janalsncm wrote: post #118

I believe the central thesis of this article is unsupported, and other assertions are false. One, the article asserts that too many stops is the main cause of low ridership in the US. I didn’t even see a correlation (which would still not prove one causes the other) between number of stops and ridership. This is the central thesis of the article. Two, removing stops will likely not make the remaining stops nicer. Cit…

Why have bus stops at all, waymo should build a transit bus or large van and run them autonomously. Then they could optimize the fleet as they please. Bus stops were a solution to a lack of connectivity and demand.

Those busses still need designated spots to stop at. They can't be stopping in the middle of a street

Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

#130

Post by nickorlow »

This is very true (that re-balancing will help ridership/operations), but politically it's hard to do. Everyone wants better buses, but nobody wants to lose the stop right next to their house/apartment (even if the nearest stop is only a block or two away).

Unfortunately, the naysayers usually get their way as changing the status quo like this is hard to do. Transit Authorities need to be given more leeway to operate how they want w/ less political involvement.

Countries that are less NIMBY/lawsuit/etc happy have vastly better public transit b/c of this.

Philadelphia City Council (which actually doesn't have any direct oversight of SEPTA) pretty much killed SEPTA's attempt at this.

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