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Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

worksinprogress.co

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

#161

Post by calvinmorrison »

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…

funnily enough, buses in philadelphia are IMO pretty nice. Especially the current fleet. No more hiking up narrow stairs. They sit low to the curb, easy on and off, go to a lot of locations, and they're clean inside and out.

Compare that to the subway which several stories below city hall, nasty, dirty, filthy, stinking air, human excrement, rats, etc... I love the bus

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

#162

Post by enragedcacti »

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.

Demand-responsive transport (DRT) has been tried a bunch of times in all sorts of different environments and pretty much never lives up to the promise. Predictability is really important and ridership drops as soon as users start having to plan too far ahead, which in the past has been essential to DRT routing.

Autonomy could improve responsiveness to demand but you still run into other issues. DRT usually won't be able to take advantage of things proven to make buses faster and more consistent (bus lanes, reducing stop count, transit priority signals). Futher, consistency and response times gained by dynamic routing can easily be overshadowed by increased variability in trip time as the route adjusts to add new passengers or make out of the way drop-offs.

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

#163

Post by adrianN »

epolanski wrote: post #128
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 pa…

I live in Berlin and strongly prefer the bike over the bus because buses are slow and unreliable. I wish we had a lot more bus lanes and aggressively towed cars blocking them. More subways would be even better though.

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

#164

Post by calvinmorrison »

culi wrote: post #129
the_sleaze_ wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

funnily enough, they get designated spots and they still just stop in the middle of the street

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

#165

Post by LucasBrandt »

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…

But lots of people _do_ already ride buses! There are already current riders, and potential riders who are making these marginal decisions. Occasional riders will decide between transport modes based on the trip - making marginal improvements (or regressions) would change the rate at which they choose to ride the bus.

Even if every current person's mind has been completely made up based on past experience, there are always "new adults" learning to get around and forming opinions.

So I strongly disagree: marginal improvements DO matter. And I agree with the author that this would be a relatively easy improvement to deliver for many cities.

I live in Chicago with the third-closest stop spacing per the article. I'm personally able to walk a block or two further to a bus stop no problem. Bus stop consolidation would save me a lot of time over the course of a year!

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

#166

Post by burnt-resistor »

paxys wrote: post #57

Something the article completely skips over is that European cities have significantly better and safer pedestrian infrastructure than their US counterparts. American streets are built to prioritize cars and cars alone. Sidewalks are often unmaintained, bumpy, and sometimes missing altogether. Crossings are often unmarked and dangerous. Stop signs and signals are routinely ignored, especially when turning. This is wh…

Yep.

Just one thoughtless example: Austin TX downtown is actively hazardous to non-motor vehicle users. One example is worn down and effectively camouflaged pucks the same color as the roadway about 10 cm wide by 6 cm high sticking out the middle of the road randomly that once represented bike lane merge path markers. Ask me how I know. :/

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

#167

Post by pavel_lishin »

dqv wrote: post #147
wnevets wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't forget to add more lanes to support all of these new buses on the road, we need to keep our drive time low!

Not to mention we need places to park these buses. We should require every commercial location to have multi-level parking decks so that there is ample parking.

That's ludicrous. Think of the property values that would be decreased by thusly besmirching the precious skyline! Instead, we should mandate that people build out, wider & longer, rather than taller. Commercial locations should have parking lots for these microbuses (should really come up with a better name for them, too.)

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

#168

Post by pavel_lishin »

ambicapter wrote: post #146
pavel_lishin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very, very few people in America who - when given a choice between driving and taking public transit - will take public transit, no matter how convenient the public transit is. And in this example, how many stops would you have to cut to turn an hour-long bus ride into a 20 minute one, to compete with the car? You're effectively cutting it down to two stops - where you board, and where you disembark. That's…

> There are very, very few people in America who - when given a choice between driving and taking public transit - will take public transit, no matter how convenient the public transit is. I find this very unlikely to be true for people who have spent any amount of time driving in a city.

I think the majority of city residents tend not to own cars, but I could be wrong about that.

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

#169

Post by francisofascii »

heyitsmedotjayb wrote: post #26

I think this kind of thing is a bigger problem than people realize. I take a regional commuter bus to and from my local international airport when I fly. The huge bus has to slowly and carefully enter my local universities 'bus loop', making several tight turns through traffic lights to get to the bus stop, and then make the journey out again. It takes 10-15 minutes in traffic to move the bus ~200feet from the boulev…

Yep, this is a good example of the stops that really slow down bus routes. You have situations where you have to make a stop, like for a big university, but it's not feasible to simply drop people off on the side of a busy/high speed road.

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

#170

Post by oblio »

krab wrote: post #137
culi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Taxis/Ubers/... can and do stop in the middle of a street. Why would that be different for a bus picking up a single person?

What if it's 5 people? 10? What if instead of many huge buses like today it's 5x as many smaller buses?

You can't just have buses stopping randomly everywhere, it doesn't scale.

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