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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

#181

Post by ragall »

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…

> I believe the central thesis of this article is unsupported

You believe wrong. The article gives examples of cities that have already done that, and have seen average speeds go up and total ridership go up as well.

> Cities aren’t thinking about how to allocate a fixed bus budget.

Lol, dude.

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

#182

Post by nickorlow »

spenczar5 wrote: post #177

"Cheap" how? I have a friend who works on Seattle's bus planning. Removing a stop is a _lot_ of political work. When an elderly person depends on that bus stop being within a block so they can get to their doctor, and you're proposing to move it six blocks further away, that's essentially a _political_ cost. It might better in the system throughput, and those benefits may even outweigh the misery put on that one pers…

I think the article means 'cheap' as in it doesn't really require any new/expensive infrastructure and could theoretically be done overnight.

Though, as you mention it's a big political ask (which is unfortunate).

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

#183

Post by hinkley »

Waiting for the umpteenth bus stop when I used to commute by them, I kept thinking how much earlier I would get to work if we had bus lines that stopped every other bus stop with strategically placed transfer stations, where you could switch between them or catch a bus going perpendicular to the first route.

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

#184

Post by collabs »

One big dream I have is to have some kind of free of cost at the point of service micro transit -- my dream is basically uber pool without the uber. Vans about the size of a Ford Transit or even a fuller size bus up to 40 passengers that picks up and drops passengers where they are or where they want to go to all with the push of a button on their smart phone and lots of patience. The idea is to have a huge number of government owned public transit vehicles that don't follow any published route but dynamically change their routes almost like some kind of Google Maps or Uber Pool but all the data about where people take rides at what time of the day and where they go and where the hot spots we have are now fully available to the government to improve the fixed route scheduled public transit.

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

#185

Post by elzbardico »

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…

I used buses most of my life before remote work, even having a car, because I lived in place were this is feasible, and for me it is a no-brainer that more stops means a slower trip. It does makes a huge difference.

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

#186

Post by ragall »

axus wrote: post #142
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

I think a bus could stop in the middle of the street, but a bus stop still removes dependence on a smartphone and protects from the weather.

No it couldn't, for legal liability reasons, usability for the travellers, etc...

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

#187

Post by cozzyd »

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?

yes, and it keeps blocking my bus. Fortunately it is now legal in Chicago for drivers to get fined for stopping in bus stops/bus lanes automatically via cameras on the buses. Not sure if it is actually happening though..

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

#188

Post by nickorlow »

adverbly wrote: post #159

How is this not a solved problem already? I'd assume people managing routes do this sort of analysis already. If they don't then sure give this a go in a few places and measure the results. Sounds like its worth a short if we're so off from EU.

People complain to their local governments + sue transit authorities that try to do this because they like having a stop right outside their house

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

#189

Post by hinkley »

janalsncm wrote: post #127
stetrain wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I reliably pickup times are amplified by the number of stops that are made. The stop and go time is fixed. The amount of time it takes 2 people to exit a bus versus four is lot linear. It depends on how full the bus is. But it definitely does slow down when people are getting off and on at every single stop.

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

#190

Post by ragall »

bojan wrote: post #134
ipdashc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's different per country, and even per city within the country. As a rule of thumb, big cities don't have buttons/cords, smaller ones do.

I've never seen cords in Europe, neither in a big city nor little towns.
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