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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

#371

Post by eddy162 »

Work in the industry: way too many planners and transit consultants are fixating on too many stops as being a problem, likely since it's the one piece of infrastructure they can control when roads and traffic lights are designed for cars not people.

Depending on the road network and land-uses, removing stops only 200-metres apart to make them 400-metres apart (the industry standard) could decrease access to transit within a 5-minute walk by anywhere from 10-50%+, so it's limited to where you can actually apply it without penalizing (ie. putting them outside of a 7-10-minute walk) so many customers that they look for alternatives.

In Europe stop spacings are much longer even for local routes (over 400-800-metres), but this is because everyone generally lives within walking distance for their errands, so transit is used only for longer, more commute-like trips, where a longer walk for faster travel times makes sense. Accessibility is also less of a priority there so they're less sensitive to requests from seniors and those with disabilities, with many buses not being wheelchair accessible. In US/Canada, a lot of transit riders live over a 20-30-minute (often with hostile walking conditions like crossing highway ramps) walk from the nearest grocery store, school, pharmacy, etc., so they'd oppose adding 2-3-minutes of walking to shorten a 10-minute bus ride.

Moreover, closely spaced stops are really only an issue in older (pre-war) downtowns where frequent stops are the result of decades of requests from residents (especially seniors) and from schools/churches/grocery stores/retirement homes/medical clinics. Out in the suburbs, buses usually bypass most stops, and schedules take that into account. And in places with amazing land-use like Pheonix and Vegas, you have long stretches of nothing so of course there'll be higher average stop spacings.

Lastly, much of the time-savings from express routes (that skip stops) and bus stop consolidation/balancing, is from being more in sync with the lights, which are usually designed for through traffic (ie. a green wave). Transit Signal Priority can help achieve significant savings (over 10-30%+) without removing any stops, though moving stops to after the light makes it more effective (and even that can be politically difficult).

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

#372

Post by rickydroll »

estebank wrote: post #289
rickydroll wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm a corner case on this, but there are two cases where our car life significantly improves your quality of life. 1: you live with ADHD: "Oh my God, I need to leave five minutes ago" scheduling method. To anyone who says, "You just need to be more disciplined about time," I refer you to the part about ADHD. 2: If your quality of life depends on activities that are more wilderness/far away from cities, such as…

Half of all dutch people own cars (10,062,194 cars / 17,904,421 people). The majority of people still ride bikes or take public transport to move around except when they need to take their car. For comparison, a majority of americans have a car (259,238,294 cars / 333,287,557 people). Note that the denominator includes children in both cases. You're not asked to give up going to the wilderness. Regarding scheduling,…

You are right, I was not asked to give up going to the wilderness; I just want to go to the wilderness of my choosing and not be constrained by someone else's transportation.

Funny thing about scheduling. I have to plan to leave an hour earlier than I need to, and even then, I'm frequently late. Yet, my hyperfocus kicks in when I sit in the car and go through the rituals of "I'm driving now." The vigilance can be exhausting, but usually only bothers me when I'm leaving an observing site at 3 o'clock in the morning or I'm driving at twilight in deer country.

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #359
Retric wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm personally able to walk a block or two further “A block or 2” each way at the start and destination is a significant difference (4-8 blocks) for most elderly people. Busses fill two different roles, as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation. They can serve a vital role for cities without the kind of investment it would take to make most typical HN reade…

I think this is a US-centric perspective. In the US, buses (and public transport in general), are thought of as social programmes. Anyone can use them, but they are really for people who can't drive or are too poor to own a car. The rider makeup then looks like that. The elderly and the poor, sadly. Services run at a huge loss and are dependent on massive and unpopular government subsidies. Quality of service is bad.…

[deleted]

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

#374

Post by petcat »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #258
petcat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gains just mean that I sit on the bus while twice as many people are trying to board at every stop. The bus is stopped for twice as long.

that's simply not how it works, and quite obviously so. the stop time is absolutely not linear in the number of people who board the bus. just think about all the time it takes to slow down, possibly make the whole bus kneel, and then sit up again. by your argument, there should be infinity bus stops, each of which only allowing one single person to load. like, what? surely we can think more critically than this...

So your counter argument is that we should actually only have two bus stops. One at the start of the route, and one at the end?

surely we can think more critically than this...

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

#375

Post by retired »

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 sometimes take a peak into European busses but I don't see 25-30 people sitting in there on average. That is a lot of people.

Busses, at least the one where I live in Europe, are very loud, noisy and smelly. I'd rather have 20 cars pass my home than one bus. I don't hear or feel those cars but once that bus passes my coffee cup visibly shakes. I also don't mind cycling behind most cars but cycling behind a bus is a terrible experience. You feel the heat blasting out of the rear-right side and the diesel smoke is terrible.

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

#376

Post by nearbuy »

bgnn wrote: post #366

Isn't the solution to this to implement bus lanes + express busses on rush hour instead of removing half of the bus stops. Every bus stop is amazingly valuable as it's the gateway to the public transit system. This doesn't mean every bus needs to stop at every stop along its route. This is not a magical European invention even, any busy Asian city will have sth like this. Bus lanes are much more effective than the ex…

Just because bus lanes are beneficial where feasible doesn't mean optimizing the number of bus stops isn't also beneficial.

Clearly it's possible for there to be too many bus stops. You wouldn't put a bus stop every 30 ft. So it's also possible that some existing bus routes have too many stops, and spacing them out more would help.

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

#377

Post by iamcalledrob »

xp84 wrote: post #370
iamcalledrob wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a US-centric perspective. In the US, buses (and public transport in general), are thought of as social programmes. Anyone can use them, but they are really for people who can't drive or are too poor to own a car. The rider makeup then looks like that. The elderly and the poor, sadly. Services run at a huge loss and are dependent on massive and unpopular government subsidies. Quality of service is bad.…

Spot-on analysis. I agree that transport should operate on a basically break-even basis, but offset in two ways: 1. Where the Government wants to subsidize some group (e.g. help the disadvantaged by giving them discounts) they should pay the fair price to the transit agency out of the budget of Welfare, not drag on the financials of the transport agency. In other words, it shouldn't be possible that the transport age…

Incidentally, London has a "Freedom Pass" (free transport for retirees), which is funded in the way you describe.

Instead of TfL being forced to take the loss, they are reimbursed by local government cost of the transport.

As an aside, I also take some issue with this pass being completely free to use. In my experience, people end up using it to go a single stop just because it's free, so why not -- which slows bus service for everyone else. I think it should be 20p per journey or something like that.

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

#378

Post by retired »

enraged_camel wrote: post #192
janalsncm wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> 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. Actually I think it is both. Car culture in Europe is nowhere as dominant as it is in the US. Many Europeans grow up with public transportation as the default mode of getting around. So they are more likely to be accustomed to things that become grievances for Amer…

> public transportation as the default mode

Do you have any sources on that? In basically any European country the car dominates and is used far more than public transport. Even in cycle-friendly Netherlands the majority of people go to work by car.

https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/visualisaties/verkeer-en-vervoer/pe...

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

#379

Post by JuniperMesos »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #367
x0x0 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also too, packed with junkies who, at best, behave erratically and at worse assault randoms. Taking the bus around sf makes it immediately clear why (not all, but most) people who have options choose them.

Honestly, there aren't that many crazy people on the SF Muni/busses. The detractor for taking these services is speed and frequency. Even factoring in parking, traffic, and bus lanes, it's much faster to drive within SF than take the bus. Stopping every 2 blocks and missing every other green light kills throughput. My local bus stop to connect to BART supposedly had service every 20 mins, but often a bus would be out…

You don't need that many crazy people on SF Muni/buses for it to cause a problem for everyone else who might want to take a bus.

But yeah the fact that it's often faster to walk (and definitely faster to take a bike/scooter) is also an issue.

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

#380

Post by kshacker »

IAmBroom wrote: post #29
kshacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine stopping at the bus stop and then immediately stopping at red light

I'm guessing you don't live in a city. They plan bus stops at lights, so that doesn't really happen - just sometimes there's an extra-long bus pause for mount/dismount.

Yes I am not a bus passenger. I have used buses in some US cities over a decade back, and from those rare trips my memories are not aligned with yours. Alright ...
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