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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

#581

Post by pocksuppet »

janalsncm wrote: post #422
iamcalledrob wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Honestly, there aren't that many crazy people on the SF Muni/busses. The detractor for taking these services is speed and frequency. Everyone can form their own opinion on the acceptable number of visibly intoxicated people they’d like to encounter. That said, my understanding of the law is that the correct number is zero. So seeing more than zero is an indication that laws are not being enforced. People can debate…

Like the law that makes it illegal for presidents and wealthy people to do pedophilia. That one's not enforced.

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

#582

Post by pocksuppet »

blauditore wrote: post #333
angmarsbane wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an intimidation factor that a lot of Americans won't quickly admit to when it comes to taking the bus. They don't know if they can tap with their phone to pay, if they need cash, if they can use change, if they need exact cash/change, if they need a specific transit card etc. They don't know the etiquette for asking to get off the bus and sometimes it varies by bus design. They don't know the routes or the ti…

It's the same in Europe. There are many car drivers who would never admit that, but they just don't want to leave their comfort zone and learn how to use public transport. But when asked they will say stuff like "well, we live a bit outside the city", or "now with kids you basically need a car".

I've seen what looks like 10-year-old kids taking the S-Bahn to school on their own. Apparently, that's quite common, and no excuse.

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

#583

Post by pocksuppet »

miki123211 wrote: post #270
kjkjadksj wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the monetary angle. How many european households can afford a car for both parents and a car each for two kids, registered, insured, paid for to park wherever they go? Even if you are poor in the US cars are remarkably accessible. You can finance a used car with no credit and a couple dozen dollars a month.

And the parking angle. Europe builds apartment complexes which are ~3 to ~10 stories tall, the US builds sprawling suburbs, zoned so that there's no grocery store in sight. If you're packed 3 to an apartment in a 10-story complex, it's unlikely there's enough parking for all of you.

The two basement levels in a complex that size are often parking, but the distance to the grocery store is a real factor. When the city is made of 10-story apartment complexes, the economics justify a grocery store every 10 minutes walk in every direction.

Do Americans really have to practice walking before going to visit Europe?

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

#584

Post by mcv »

cyberax wrote: post #461
mcv wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-driving cars still take up space on the road. Even more than human-driven cars, because now there will also be cars transporting 0 people. It's going to make congestion worse. Public transit is the solution to congestion. Well, one of the solutions, because bikes are probably a better solution for most people: they do start in front of your home, can park anywhere, and don't cause congestion the way cars do. We'…

> 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…

Nothing about this addresses NJB's argument that self-driving cars take up more space than regular cars, because there will now be cars with 0 people in them.

Ultimately the thing you want to transport is not cars, it's people. Walking fits the most people in a limited amount of space, then bikes, buses and other forms of public transport, then cars with 4 people in them, then cars with 3 people in them, then cars with 2 people in them, then cars with only 1 person in them, and finally empty cars. More cars will never reduce congestion.

But to address your point: A bus in a dedicated lane takes up more space than a bus that's stuck in car traffic, you are right about that. On the other hand, when congestion is so bad that cars simply don't move, no matter how many lanes they have, getting people out of cars into more efficient forms of transport, will also help cars. And a bus that actually goes, can do that. If you look in cities with good public transport, more people go by public transport than by car. In cities with good bicycle infrastructure, more people go by bike than by car. That means even cars are less likely to get stuck in traffic in those cities. Even if you take away a car lane.

I don't know where you got the idea that a bus needs 3 drivers.

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

#585

Post by AnthonyMouse »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #555
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> ~$500/mo for a typical car payment There is another interesting US-centric perspective here. For some reason, US consumers feel the need to drive new or nearly-new cars. $5000 can get you a reliable but unsexy used car. I think there is a sort of "Parkinson's law" of consumer spending at play, where financial outgoings will expand to match disposable income. I also think there's a problem with fixed spend (e.g. car…

> $5000 can get you a reliable but unsexy used car.

$5000 can get you a 10+ year old used car with 100,000+ miles on it and no warranty. That's fine if you know how to do repairs and maintenance yourself, because then you're buying a part from the internet with a low markup and installing it yourself instead of paying four times as much for someone else to do it. But not every knows how to do that, or has time, or knows how to tell if a used car with no warranty will be reliable before buying it. And if you plop $5000 down on something with no warranty and then have to scrap it after the first year because your $5000 car needs a $5500 new engine, you're not saving money.

There is also the matter of where used cars come from. You can get one for $5000 because someone paid $30,000 to buy it new ten years ago. If more people did that, fewer new cars are sold and then fewer enter the used market and used car prices go up. So you can buy a used car for $5000, but it's not possible for "most people" to do that because if they tried to, they would no longer be available for $5000.

> I also think there's a problem with fixed spend (e.g. car payment, insurance) vs per-trip spend. Per-trip costs are felt more.

Which is the problem with mass transit. You get in your car and it feels like it costs nothing, the only thing that changed is the gas gauge went down by half a tank and the odometer went up. Meanwhile the amortized cost was actually over $100. Then you go to get on the train and you immediately have to swipe your card and get a bill for $40, which feels like a lot for one trip.

Worse, the car is $100+ per trip only if you're amortizing the fixed costs, i.e. comparing to the alternative of not having a car at all. If the fixed costs of having the car are sunk, the incremental cost of the trip is maybe $15, and then when the train is $40, nobody with a car is saving money to take the train when they can.

Whereas if the train is $0, then it's "hey that goes right where I'm going this time and I don't have to buy gas". Which, if it happens often enough, means more people don't need a car to begin with.

> A reason that public transport is often more popular in European cities because driving isn't even an option.

Obviously if you make something unavailable then people use alternatives. But in the US it's the other way around -- half the population lives in the suburbs where there is no public transport, nor can there be because the density is too low.

So then you need to find ways to make public transit more attractive (like eliminating the fares) rather than making cars less attractive, because making cars less attractive is going to encounter major opposition from the people who have no available option other than to use cars.

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

#586

Post by ninalanyon »

closeparen wrote: post #488
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming you're only going a short distance. The average commute is around 15 miles. That's something like a five hour walk.

And the average commute duration is around 27 minutes. If you happened to live in one of the very few places in America where there even are 15 urban miles to cross, doing it at city bus speeds of under 10mph would be a catastrophic collapse in your standard of living.

> doing it at city bus speeds of under 10mph would be a catastrophic collapse in your standard of living.

LA average vehicle speed during rush hour is 27.6km/h (17 mph) according to Tom Tom [1]. So a 10 mph bus would turn that 27 minute journey into 46 minutes which I'll admit is more than desirable, hardly catastrophic though.

But remember that each bus can carry about fifty people which would remove close to fifty cars from the road resulting in less congestion and faster buses. Fifty cars need 400 m of road, one bus needs only 20 m.

And on your way home you can doze in your seat without causing an accident.

[1] https://www.tomtom.com/traffic-index/city/los-angeles-ca

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

#587

Post by donkeybeer »

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,…

Whats a bike? It is it a human powered bicycle or a motorcycle?

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

#588

Post by bunderbunder »

janalsncm wrote: post #416
LucasBrandt wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But lots of people _do_ already ride buses! There are already current riders, and potential riders who are making these marginal decisions. Occasional riders will decide between transport modes based on the trip - making marginal improvements (or regressions) would change the rate at which they choose to ride the bus. Even if every current person's mind has been completely made up based on past experience, there are…

Marginal changes cut in both directions. The transport duration between A and B is only one part of the calculation. A rider also needs to get from their starting point to A, and from B to their destination. Decreasing the number of As and Bs by half might reduce that 20% start/stop time by half, shaving 10% off the total time. (This is ignoring the fact that more people will need to board and leave at each stop, whi…

I also live in Chicago. The closest bus stop to my house is 2 blocks away, and the 2nd closest stop on that same line is 3 blocks away - just one block further in the direction I’m going.

I simply don’t believe that eliminating that closet stop would worsen my commute. When I’m leaving home, I would walk a block further, but probably 80+% of the time it would not increase the time I spend out in the elements because I’d just replace time standing at the bus stop with time walking to the next one. The only time it would hurt me is on the rare occasion that the bus passes me while I’m walking that extra block. (Pessimistically assuming 2 minutes to walk one block, and with buses coming every 10 minutes on average, is how I get 80%.) But I bet doing that all up and down the route would make the bus much more predictable. That closest stop is within the distance that cars back up from a traffic light at that next intersection when there’s traffic, and when the bus stops at my intersection it can often get pinned in the stop for a while when motorists aren’t in the mood to let the bus re-enter traffic. Multiply that phenomenon by, say, 20 extra stops and you get to some pretty unreliable service for people trying to get to work in the morning. I bet most of us would happily walk an extra block if it means we no longer have to leave for work half an hour early. 2 minutes extra walking on either end adds up to 4 minutes “wasted” time walking (I also am not sure I count walking as wasted time, by the way - physical activity is good for me) is a lot less than 30 minutes wasted time padding my commute to account for less reliable service.

And then when I’m coming home I get off at that stop that’s a block further away anyway. Because there’s a light at that intersection but not at the one where the close stop lies. I can easily spend more time waiting for a gap in traffic large enough to cross a busy street during the evening rush than it takes to walk that extra block.

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

#589

Post by estebank »

donkeybeer wrote: post #587
estebank wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Whats a bike? It is it a human powered bicycle or a motorcycle?

Talking about the Netherlands. Regular bicycle.

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

#590

Post by blainelewis1 »

janalsncm wrote: post #320
adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing unnecessary bus stops is a prerequisite to making busses fast. You can't run a fast bus service if the bus is stopping every single block.

There already are “express” buses that don’t stop at every stop. They don’t solve the issues I described above. Cutting the time between bus arrivals would be a much more effective solution.

Making buses faster can improve frequency though, and it's likely cheaper to improve frequency by making them faster than buying and operating more buses. The speed is almost directly correlated with the interval between buses, going 20% faster means ~20% less time between buses.
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