161–170 of 590 posts
European parcel delivery firms and postal systems (Deutsche Post DHL, La Poste, Royal Mail, PostNL and all the non-legacy competitors) generally do not commission purpose-built vehicles, they buy off the shelf small vans and light commercial vehicles.
* of course I do know why, "because jobs and politics"...
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Diesel’s last remaining benefits are of no value for a bus (locomotive-class horsepower possibilities and rapid refueling) as a bus never weighs much and goes in a circle.
Yep - and, in urban areas, buses are pretty much the best possible use case for BEVs, aren't they? Short distance, high utilisation, predictable routes with far more stop/start than normal traffic. Consider also that bus depots are the perfect site for big battery banks hooked up to their charging stations, and tend to have plenty of room for solar panels on the roof. So electrification is good for the grid too. It's…
I'd argue that mail delivery is an even better use case - it starts and stops even more frequently than a bus, practically never needs to travel at high speeds, and only needs to make one run a day.
But it's not a competition - they're both good use cases.
As people should know by now, in the last few decades China has built a massive amount of public transit infrastructure, both within cities and regional [1]. Some of the subway systems are pretty amazing (eg Chongqing [2]). I'm interested in how they did this and I think it comes down to a few major factors: 1. They standardize rolling stock. The same stuff is used across the country. I think this is really important…
The "nail house" phenomenon in China is counter-evidence to your point 3. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/apr/15/china...
China just doesn't let private property owners effectively delay and block everything.
[1]: https://www.the-independent.com/asia/china/china-grandfather...
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Yeah but the point is you want to look down the street and see if there's a city bus a few blocks away or not. If so, hurry up and walk the block to the bus stop. If not, quickly grab a coffee or decide to grab a Citibike or whatever else that depends on that information. Spotting buses a few blocks away is a crucial skill in cities.
It really isn't when many cities have apps that give you real-time information as to when to expect the next bus.
...grab my phone, unlock it, navigate to the app, wait for it to load, wait for it to figure out my location, wait for it to make an API call, try to figure out which of the two "34th and 7th" stops is the one going in the direction I want (since it's a two-way street with bus stops on both side of the intersection), click on one randomly, confirm from the first bus destination listed that I did click on the correct direction, otherwise go back and click on the other one, and then look at its ETA?
Sometimes it really is just better to use your eyes, to figure out that the bus is going to reach the bus stop in about 30 seconds, and that it'll take you 30 seconds of brisk walking to reach it in time, so you'd better start making a beeline now.
Don't be fooled, paying less won't help much since the cost of a bus is a small part of the costs of running a bus route. about half your costs are the bus driver. The most expensive bus is still only 1/3rd of your hourly cost of running the bus. If a more expensive bus is more reliable that could more than make up for a more expensive bus (I don't have any numbers to do math on though). Half the costs of running a b…
> about half your costs are the bus driver (Genuine question) is this true around the globe, or is that US-specific? We were in Portugal over the summer and travelled with Flixbus (for the first time ever) to get from Porto to Lisbon. Were impressed by the high-quality service and great value for money. Wonder how much the driver makes per hour?
Notably, Portugal has the lowest income, by far, of any Western European country. I would expect their bus drivers make considerably less than equivalent bus drivers in the US.
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Busses are loud, but not nearly as load and polluting as cars in aggregate
Completely false, buses are way louder than multiple cars. Buses make tons of noise when accelerating and many have obnoxious added sounds at stops for security reasons. As a full cyclist I would gladly prefer no bus and more cars. Moreover the bus are more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.
Avid cyclist myself, personally I'd rather see the stiff necked 80 year olds in cars as old as them (so barely any safety features) with tiny tiny mirrors gone off the road.
Bus drivers are at least regularly examined for their health, the buses themselves have a lot better maintenance done on them than the average private person, they got more mirrors than a disco ball, and at least here in Germany, the bus fleets are routinely updated to have allllll the bells and whistles. Lane keeps, dead-spot alerts, object tracking/warning and collision avoidance...
As for the noise: yes a bus is louder, but (IMHO, having lived on a busy road that was suddenly not so busy at all during Covid) I can handle the occasional bus every 5 minutes way better than the constant car noises.
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Bus driver also does things like trigger ramp for handicapped people, strap in wheelchairs securely, answer questions about the route, and security surveillance.
None of those should be needed. Get more people riding and they take care of security. wheelchairs are hard - but the driver strapping them in is robbing everyone else of their valuable time so we need a better soultion anyway
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I'm hearing you say we should have self-driving buses... which is feasible since their route is fixed.
Once you have self-driving, you don't _need_ buses. Large buses are fundamentally inefficient, they can never be made competitive compared to cars. And the main source of inefficiency is the number of stops and fixed routes. You can easily solve all the transportation problems with mild car-pooling. Switching buses and personal cars to something like 8-person minibuses will result in less congestion and about 2-3 tim…
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None of those should be needed. Get more people riding and they take care of security. wheelchairs are hard - but the driver strapping them in is robbing everyone else of their valuable time so we need a better soultion anyway
Every bus in Copenhagen has a button next to the door to lower the wheelchair ramp, but I have never seen anyone use it. I've never seen a wheelchair on a bus. The metro and suburban trains have level boarding (the platform is at exactly the same level as the floor of the train so it's very easy for a wheelchair user to wheel themselves in). I've still only seen wheelchairs users on these trains once or twice. I susp…
I think that the authors solution, outsourcing production is not quite right, they gloss over other issues. >In a large country like the US, some variation in bus design is inevitable due to differences in conditions like weather and topography. But Silverberg said that many customizations are cosmetic, reflecting agency preferences or color schemes but not affecting vehicle performance. This is kind of absurd, I hav…
We also don't know much about these so called purchasing contracts either. For example. do they contain sustainment services, maintenance equipment, storage facilities, or other sourcing requirements? When using federal funds, you're generally required to purchase all American products, I remember trying to furnish an office with just two desks and four chairs (nothing fancy), and the initial cost estimates were over…
I'd start with one HUGE obvious waste. Why don't the buses anywhere have some sort of uber style pickup. My point. I see countless buses running empty all the time through the day where I live outside of busy hours. It is so depressing to watch 3 empty busses pull up to an empty stop to not pick anyone up then do it again and again and again.. I was once told it cost something like $250+ every time an empty bus drives one direction on its empty route. And there are hundreds of busses that do this for hours each day. Just so in case someone is there they can be picked up.
It seems like a dynamic system for determining where where people that need the bus are would be a massive saving. Or really just changing to a taxi style system only using buses during rush hours. I think some cities are actually experimenting with this.
Someone is gonna come at me about the reliability scheduling of transport for underprividged. But they have never actually rode a bus route so they don't know that the buses are as reliably late as they are on time in 90% of cities. This change would likely improve scheduling for people that need it.