This is obvious. Most people won't take the bus if it's too slow. Well in the US you can't bike without getting killed except in some rare cities, so cycling is not a competition, but it would replace the bus if it were allowed.
Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
541–550 of 656 posts
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was in SF, my European mind was astonished why bus stops are so often (and why there is a cable to pull, but that's a different thing). Considering that the area was less populated than my city. And we also have speedbuses that stop every second or third bus stop. It was unreal. In my city bus stops have 1km between them (sometimes it is 700m sometimes 1.3km) so about 3200 feet. It is about 15min walk between…
> 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 pure eletronic (no steampunk thing like in SF ;) ) - a button on handles, all over the bus, with obvious ones next to a door.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#543Earlier 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.
I remember that in Poland in early 1980s I've seen that cord somewhere in a bus.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Also not sure what is old-fashioned about a pull cord compared to a bunch of buttons.
Have you seen many cords going into or out of desktops, laptops, or in cars? It is old fashioned.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
But for many old people walking that one stop is difficult. So this charge would partially defeat the object of the pass.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 doubl…
Joining two vehicles together with double the weight and double the axle count does not change the load on each axle.
So, scenario A:
4 ton vehicle, 2 axles
load per axle is 2 tonnes.
2^4 is 16
2 axles - so load is 32.
Another vehicle the same - also loading 32
Total: 64
8 ton vehicle, 4 axles
load per axle is 2 tonnes
2^4 is 16
4 axles - load load is 64
Total: 64Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking such a fee also has transaction costs, in the time if nothing else. To liken this back to the old days - the difference in time between flashing a valid transfer slip (of paper) and having to drop change into the automated till.
Nowadays, both are “scan your card at entry and exit”, aren’t they? Elderly will have to do that, too, because a) I expect they still want to track usage, and b) allowing some passengers to hop on a bus without checking in makes it too easy for those ineligible to do that (e.g. elderly who do not live in London) to try and do that, too.
Elderly in all of England have the equivalent of a Freedom Pass but just for busses (Freedom Passes include almost all Tfl transport, e.g. underground, trams, DLR and some Nationbal Rail inside London)
Unfortunately the bus passes and freedom passes are not interchangeable and sometimes have to be manually checked if not in the local region,
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only because you know your loss but cannot imagine your gains in time.
So 1/Nth of the ridership is gonna have their stop deleted at a sum total of X man years. But it's all gonna be worth it based on a projected possible upside that may not materialize dependent upon many factors? This is even worse than the usual slight of hand wherein one takes a widely diffuse hard to quantify cost and rounds it to zero and then dishonestly acts as though that justifies implementing their pet policy…
The downside is you have a longer walk. The upside is you get there faster - unlee your trip is so short you should walk the whole thing. People value their time and so the majority are better off.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
1: This "ADHD" issue is because you've never seen properly ran bus system. I used to live in big European city, riding bus to work everyday, and I never even knew the bus schedule. I did not have to. They would come every 15 minutes, or every 7-8 minutes during the rush hour. So I could just show up at the stop anytime and be sure that a bus will appear quite soon. Zero advance planning required.
The ADHD issue is because I always think I can get more done in the time before I need to leave, and I end up hyper-focusing and missing the leave time. Another ADHD factor is that if I don't sit and watch every stop go by, I am likely to miss it because I'm reading and not paying attention. This is not a problem when driving.
But when you drive you can't read.
Thus you get more done when using public transport. Nowadays with phones and portables you can even read your email and work rather than justb read the newspaper as commuterts did 20 years ago.
Re: Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
#550Earlier 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…
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…
Busess are improving many of them are now fully electric.
20% of London's busses are zero emission - agree that London is dense enough for this to work - long didtance busses still have to be diesel, although Tfl have some 15 mile routes that are electric