Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by GeoAtreides » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

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…

>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.

With all due respect, I feel the one asserting things without argument might be you. The whole article is about how number of stops is too high and so drives low ridership.

I am incapable of even trying to provide quotes from the text, as that would mean simply restating the text in its entirety.

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

#222

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #194

enragedcacti wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I've seen it work pretty well in a number of places in the form of privately owned minibuses/vans that can rapidly go where the demand is needed. As an example, all throughout the Eastern Caribbean this system works really well (in my experience better than most centrally planned bus systems in large cities). On any given island you can go to any main road and within a few minutes a minibus will come along. Most of t…

I believe this is also how it works in many Mexican cities.

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

#223

Post by AlotOfReading » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #194

enragedcacti wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I've seen it work pretty well in a number of places in the form of privately owned minibuses/vans that can rapidly go where the demand is needed. As an example, all throughout the Eastern Caribbean this system works really well (in my experience better than most centrally planned bus systems in large cities). On any given island you can go to any main road and within a few minutes a minibus will come along. Most of t…

It's really not ideal. Similar systems are common in Central Asia. They make it difficult for travelers to predict journey times, it's unfriendly to tourists, and it's much less accessible to other populations (e.g. the disabled). They also don't scale well to large urban environments or out of the way journeys in my experience.

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

#224

Post by dghlsakjg » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #168

ambicapter wrote: post #146

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. 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.

Owning a car is not mutually exclusive with commuting via transit.

> I think the majority of city residents tend not to own cars

This depends a HUGE amount on the city. NYC/London/Paris probably true. LA? It is not uncommon for a household to have more cars than drivers

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

#225

Post by MereInterest » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

nickorlow wrote: post #151

JBorrow wrote: post #54

At some level this is driven by street design. The reason bus stops are so close in Philadelphia is because they stop every block, and there's a stop sign every block. The blocks are very small. I don't know that 'removing' these as bus-stops would actually change anything. I think a larger question is whether route changes should occur. There was a large effort in Philly called the 'Bus Revolution' [1] that aimed to…

Removing the stops helps a lot. As an example on SEPTA, the 124/125 [1][2] to Wissahickon T.C. takes 10+ minutes longer than taking the 27 [3] when starting at J.F.K. & 15th. (for context: the 124/5 operate locally west through center city before getting on the highway while the 27 only makes 1-2 more stops in center city before getting on the highway) Making these extra stops causes the bus to 'miss' the light cycle…

> Making these extra stops causes the bus to 'miss' the light cycle at almost every stop.

This would be a much bigger change, but it's also possible for the lights to give priority to buses. When a bus approaches a light, that should trigger the lights to advance to the part of the cycle that gives the bus the green light. That way, you prioritize the 20 people in the bus rather than the 10 people each in their own car.

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

#226

Post by selimthegrim » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:58 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #90

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…

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…

You’re assuming parking is free. Donald Shoup’s shade is shaking its head at you

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

#227

Post by sailingparrot » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

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…

> Two, removing stops will likely not make the remaining stops nicer. Cities aren’t thinking about how to allocate a fixed bus budget.

But that’s not at all what the article is about? The thesis is not that having bus stops with music and heating and free drinks will make more people take the bus, it’s that in the U.S., the slowness of buses is making them an unattractive option. And stopping too often is a major reason.

As someone living in SF I 100% agree. The bus stops all the time. The muni is also crazy slow on the west side because it has to mark every single stop at every block just like any car instead of just having priority.

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

#228

Post by tclancy » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 6:59 PM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #158

epolanski wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe it goes without saying, but the reason you don’t mind the bus in Europe is not because you are European but because the European buses are nicer. The things you say about noise and pollution are also true in the US, and American drivers are acutely aware of them. But the alternative is not a European bus, so people drive.

You are stating unequivocally that every bus in every European country is nicer than the average bus in the US?

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

#229

Post by dghlsakjg » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #160

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.

I've never seen the pull-cord things in Europe, but they seem to be common in the US. To European eyes they seem old fashioned, untidy, and possibly dirty.

Can you clarify what you mean by dirty? Or why that would be any more dirty than anything else in public? European buses frequently have stop buttons, not sure how those would be any cleaner than a plastic covered cord.

Also not sure what is old-fashioned about a pull cord compared to a bunch of buttons. Just a different way of activating an electrical circuit.

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

#230

Post by pornel » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

Bluecobra wrote: post #22

I'm for all for less bus stops, but how do you make it equitable for people who can't walk longer distances if they are disabled or have an underlying health condition? Run a separate paratransit line?

In European cities this is mitigated by having low-floor buses and stops with level boarding to support mobility scooters and wheelchairs. There are also dedicated taxis available for people with disabilities (possibly subsidised). Over a long term this is also a self-regulating problem. Elderly people and services/businesses for them take into account availability of public transit when choosing properties.

Buses are mass transit. The real goal isn't serving poor people, but moving people with higher throughput than it's possible by cars individually (a single bus fits ~50 people). If you make bus lines slow and fail to attract significant numbers of passengers by forcing buses to serve every whatabout case, you're making them fail at their primary goal.

You can't make half-pregnant public transit. If you have a congested city, and just add nearly empty buses sitting in traffic and blocking lanes at every intersection, it will be strictly worse for everyone. OTOH if you can make buses an attractive option, then each bus can take 30+ cars off the road, leaving room for dedicated bus lanes, more buses, resulting in faster and more regular service.