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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

#531

Post by servo_sausage »

hnav wrote: post #433
eikenberry wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with buses is always not enough buses. If a bus came every 5 minutes you wouldn't need to spread out the stops as they would naturally spread out with fewer people getting on/off due to more busses. It would make transfers more tolerable, missing a bus wouldn't matter, buses wouldn't get packed around rush-hour, etc. Buses could be a great public transportation system but I don't think any city cares enou…

I think that's where BEV and L4 autonomy comes in once it's commodified. Buses are huge in part because of having to amortize the driver and that makes them very crude. An autonomous mini-bus that can fit 10 people would fit more organically into cityscapes, destroy the pavement less, be run at 20% of current headways, etc, etc. Honestly the only big issues there I can think of are seatbelts (lower mass means that it…

If there is a case for a smaller bus due to autonomy, there is a case for no bus at all.

Ultimately public transport that doesn't get its own infrastructure (lanes, rails, or tunnels), is just a economic compromise to move people for cheaper than a car... It's not better for the user in any way.

And if it does need special infrastructure to make sense, it gets harder and harder to justify at all once autonomy is in the mix.

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

#532

Post by mattmaroon »

terminalshort wrote: post #510
natecham wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there. Build enough buses for everybody so they can choose where those two stops are.

Great idea! And then what if we went even further and made enough busses so we could all have one waiting at our houses at all times?

And then what if you owned the bus so it was super convenient. And maybe made it smaller so it was easier to drive and park.

Just like a little 4 seat bus you could just have all the time. I bet that would be popular!

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

#533

Post by yfw »

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…

Probably because you have a better social net and buses aren't being used by the marginalized parts of society.

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

#534

Post by sethammons »

terminalshort wrote: post #510
natecham wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why stop there. Build enough buses for everybody so they can choose where those two stops are.

Great idea! And then what if we went even further and made enough busses so we could all have one waiting at our houses at all times?

You might need to make the buses smaller. Maybe give some options on the number of seats. You could also tailor the bus; different colors and shapes. Heck, you could store and transfer things easier. Personal buses sound like a marketing win.

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

#535

Post by bboozzoo »

analog31 wrote: post #399
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.…

This idea occurred to me while I was traveling in Europe. Many of their trains have two classes of cars, where the first class is just slightly nicer. This could be done with buses too. Just alternate buses on the same route, that are expensive and free. The poor can take the free bus, and those who want a more exclusive social experience can pay for the expensive bus. I can't make any excuses for the social and clas…

I believe we already have that, and it's called a cab. You pay extra, get an exclusive social experience and, at least in some parts of the world, get to share the bus lanes with other folks taking the bus.

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

#536

Post by XCabbage »

xnyan wrote: post #471
philwelch wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Busses are light compared to 18 wheelers and other heavy equipment, they also replace many cars and SUV’s which keep getting heavier. They don’t replace nearly enough cars and SUV’s to make up for the difference in fourth power of axle weight. But yes, 18 wheelers are worse.

>They don’t replace nearly enough cars and SUV’s to make up for the difference in fourth power of axle weight A modest bus holds 40-50 people. Most commuter traffic is single driver, single vehicle. I don't know to which power the difference in axle weight would have to be to surpass the efficiency gains of replacing 40 to 50 American sized SUVs with a city bus, but I suspect it's more than four.

At the heavy end, SUVs weigh about 3 tonnes, while at the light end buses weigh about 12, a 4x difference. 4^4 = 256. So if the claim about the fourth power is true, you'd need to replace 256 SUVs to break even on wear, which is obviously impossible.

(I don't really understand how the fourth power of axel weight thing can possibly be true, though. Why would joining two vehicles together into a mega vehicle with double the weight and double the wheel count suddenly cause the combined vehicle to inflict 16x more wear than before you joined the two together? It makes no sense.)

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

#537

Post by dwroberts »

Feel like this overlooks an obvious part of how buses work, which is that buses only stop at a stop if you press the button, or if there are people at the bus stop. The number of bus stops doesn’t actually matter even if they’re super close together - unless there are actually people waiting at all of them

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

#538

Post by StingyJelly »

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…

> The arrival times are not reliable and are often a long time apart.

Which can be caused by having too many stops and having to choose a suboptimal route that can service them all. In the town I live in I try to avoid almost all buses except the express ones that have just a few stops but choose a reasonable route and thus are rarely late.

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

#539

Post by zimpenfish »

yunwal wrote: post #480
cyberax wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-driving cars still take up space on the road This is a false argument. Think about this: a bus every 10 minutes is effectively 500-900 meters long! It easily "takes" as much space as 100+ cars. In other words, nothing would change from the traffic perspective if instead of 1 bus every 5 minutes, you had 100 individual cars. The "people in the shape of a bus" argument makes sense only when you're talking about…

> a bus every 10 minutes is effectively 500-900 meters long! uhhhhhh what. What does every 10 minutes have to do with this at all > It easily "takes" as much space as 100+ cars. are you ok??? have you seen a bus before?? > A single bus needs about 3 drivers to be effective I have never ever seen a bus with 3 drivers in it. If you're talking about 3 drivers over the course of 24h, those drivers are not in the bus at t…

> If you're saying the average bus route serves 15 people per day, you are certainly mistaken.

Definitely mistaken for London - currently (according to DFT's numbers) about 18 people per bus average (not per day, though.)

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

#540

Post by fragmede »

sethammons wrote: post #534
terminalshort wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great idea! And then what if we went even further and made enough busses so we could all have one waiting at our houses at all times?

You might need to make the buses smaller. Maybe give some options on the number of seats. You could also tailor the bus; different colors and shapes. Heck, you could store and transfer things easier. Personal buses sound like a marketing win.

You'd have to invest so much money into putting roads everywhere, and then the personal busses need to have their own refueling depots everywhere, and getting the oil for those depots in the first place is going to be the cause of needless war and deaths. That's totally never gonna happen!
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