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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

#571

Post by crottypeter »

hirsin wrote: post #232
bogedy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

always seemed obvious to me that the reason for the disparity is that european buses are a way to get around dense cities and US buses are a welfare program for residents of sparser cities who can't afford cars. the bus lines don't actually go anywhere people care about, they're their just to provide the bare minimum ability to go somewhere. the top comment is right and this article is a good exmaple of what transit…

Which of the cities used as examples in the articles are "sparse"? LA? Pittsburgh is one of the smaller ones listed and while the bus network there is very hub and spoke, it's also still semi usable. But to call NYC, LA, Philly, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, etc sparse doesn't seem very accurate. Yes, LA is vast, but I wouldn't call it sparse.

Single family homes are sparse. Ground level (not multi-storey) car parks are sparse.

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

#572

Post by pocksuppet »

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 couldn't afford the bus drivers. The convenience of the bus is that someone else drives for you. If you have to drive, it's not a bus. Maybe a wealthy tech investor could announce self-driving cars...

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

#573

Post by pocksuppet »

tcoff91 wrote: post #442
wsatb wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in Chicago and wouldn’t mind walking extra to another stop, but Chicago also has a massive traffic problem, particularly post pandemic. During rush hour, the bus is stop and go already. I’m really curious how this would pan out here, but it can’t be the only solution.

I think the only way to solve this is to invest much more into making buses nicer & increasing the numbers, and then instituting bus-only lanes on major arterial roads so that taking the bus becomes faster than fighting traffic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox asserts that the speed of cars is caused by the speed of public transit. Improving public transit reduces traffic jams, even if you take away car lanes to do it.

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

#574

Post by fuzzzerd »

ecshafer wrote: post #251
miltonlost wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in Chicago with the third-closest stop spacing per the article. I'm personally able to walk a block or two further to a bus stop no problem. Bus stop consolidation would save me a lot of time over the course of a year! Until there' a snowstorm, and no one shovels. And you have a broken leg, or are elderly, or disabled. Sure, it might save you personally some time, but we live in a society and should try to h…

Does Chicago not mandate people shovel their drives ways? In most towns/cities in upstate new york you can get a fine if you don't shovel your sidewalk.

Chicago does have rules for timely show removal on sidewalks. In practice I have never heard of anyone receiving a fine even when the walk in front of a property remains uncleared for weeks on end. There is essentially little to no enforcement.

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

#575

Post by pocksuppet »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #377
xp84 wrote: post #370

Earlier 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…

Fare-charging for public transit has significant frictional overhead. I think in Luxembourg they just made it all free and it didn't cost much money because they didn't need to spend anything on collecting fares. The D-Ticket in Germany too: in some cities, almost everyone has a D-Ticket so the frequency of ticket checks was drastically reduced.

Another counterpoint: if the bus isn't overloaded, taking an additional passenger costs next to nothing, while delivering significant value to the passenger. Don't we want to create as much value as possible?

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

#576

Post by pocksuppet »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #417
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.…

> In an alternate universe, public transport is run to compete with the car, and attracts all demographics. Day-to-day operations are un-subsidised, and therefore relatively expensive. It competes on value. People use it because it's a better experience than driving. The problem with this in the US is that it's nearly impossible for the bus to be faster than a car without making the car slower on purpose, and the lat…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox

Switching a car lane to a bus lane actually makes the cars in the remaining lanes move faster.

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

#577

Post by pocksuppet »

philwelch wrote: post #435
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.…

Private car ownership is a better everyday solution for almost anyone who can afford it, which includes the vast majority of Americans. If buses tried to compete with cars, they would lose. The only remaining niche for the bus is as a public accommodation for the poor, disabled, and elderly, or occasionally in dense city centers. At least that’s what I think. But if you’re right, and there’s a version of bus transpor…

That can't be the whole equation. Why do so many people in London choose to ride the bus and the tube instead of taking private cars?

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

#579

Post by pocksuppet »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #425
xmprt wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient Point-to-point transportation is faster and more convenient because: 1. we don't have bus lanes so buses are forced to sit in the same traffic as cars and 2. buses are often underfunded so have slow/infrequent service. Point to point transportation is often slower and less convenient if buses and public transit is done right.…

Bus lanes still seem like the thing people who hate cars propose to intentionally screw over the people who have them. "Hey, we have this road with two or three lanes in each direction but it's fairly congested. Each of the lanes is carrying something like 50 cars per minute during the day! Why don't we impound one of them so we can have a bus carrying 40 people drive on it once every 15 minutes?" If you have enough…

We did that with computer networks. We had this high-quality voice call service, and then someone thought it should be switched to transmit data instead, of which voice calls were just one type. Now you have a minimum voice latency of a few hundred ms because voice traffic is competing with data traffic, and you didn't actually get much more data throughput because it was only one wire pair.

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

#580

Post by rjmunro »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #377
xp84 wrote: post #370

Earlier 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…

I agree and disagree with this. Sometimes older people using the busses are what keeps the routes busy and makes it worth running a good service for everyone else. But on the other hand, I have seen abuses. Years ago I somehow got chatting to a fellow bus passenger who liked to ride the busses all day as a hobby. I think rather than charging I'd limit it to 10 free rides a week or something, where a ride is equivalent to a hopper fair - as many connections as you need within an hour of the first touch-in. After that it should use pre-pay credit at a normal rate.
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