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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

#601

Post by gadders »

simoncion wrote: post #558
gadders wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the correct number of crazy people you think you should meet on the bus?

> What is the correct number of crazy people you think you should meet on the bus? As many as you'd expect to meet given how many choose to use the bus to go somewhere. Retorts: "Buses shouldn't be mobile homeless shelters." Sure, I agree. But I also agree that someone who has paid their fare and isn't disrupting the safe operation of the bus is entitled to ride the bus. If I want to purchase a ticket and sit my ass…

Having people who need help on buses instead of in treatment isn't safe for them or other passengers. Just look at Jordan Neely or Iryna Zarutska.

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

#602

Post by retired »

panick21_ wrote: post #517
retired wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I calculated this back when I commuted daily. I was spending €700 a month on my car. Public transport would have been only €450 a month. Still went by car. Car was 35 minutes door to door in a climate controlled environment with a good seat and good stereo system. Public transport was two hours, multiple legs with various trains and busses, various payment systems, problems with missing connections, waiting outside i…

Are you taking into account depreciation of the car and interest? Are you taking into account the cost of your parking spot? Also, you example is just that. It will depend on many things. In places that are properly designed often the difference is nowhere near as large and the difference in money is bigger. Also, in places where there is lots of public transport, when you get a universal ticket, you can also use it…

That was including all associated cost for both forms of transport.

This was in The Netherlands, which has one of the best public transport in the EU so I expect it to be worse elsewhere.

If you already have a car, you typically do your other activities by car as well since you already paid for insurance and road tax and it is significantly cheaper to go by car as you only have gas, wear and depreciation to pay for.

The universal ticket does not exist in The Netherlands. Train only is €399 a month for standing. Bus is typically €100 per month per region.

My commutes by car were always peaceful. A lot more peaceful than standing in a train worrying if I would catch my bus connection because the train is behind schedule. That would add another 30 minutes to the trip. You could read a book standing but I would recommend against taking a nap or drinking coffee. I find taking public transport infinitely more stressful than taking a car. With a car you will always make it to your destination, often within reasonable time. With public transport you have no idea if you will make it. Sometimes you have to go home or find a hotel and try again the next day.

I'm wondering now if you have ever experienced European public transport or if you have just read about it on the internet.

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

#603

Post by cyberax »

mcv wrote: post #584
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…

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 wi…

> 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.

And? There are also buses that trundle around with nobody but the driver in it. Or unused bikes and e-scooters that litter the sidewalks.

> Ultimately the thing you want to transport is not cars, it's people.

Yeah. And let's make it efficient. Put these people into 3-level bunk beds. This way they can travel all together in just 1 bus to their assigned workplace. And you don't need to run buses until they're allowed to clock off their shift.

Efficiency!

> On the other hand, when congestion is so bad that cars simply don't move

In this case you close the downtown offices and force them to work on alternate days, like they do in India with cars. Remote work already can replace 70% of all work, and with AI this number will grow.

Apart from that, mild carpooling will decrease the number of cars by 2x. Small vans with 6 seats can _easily_ remove all congestion.

> no matter how many lanes they have, getting people out of cars into more efficient forms of transport, will also help cars.

Just one ask for urbanists. Can you just stop lying, please? Just one thing. Don't say that "transit help cars". It doesn't. There is a lot of research from _you_ (e.g. https://archive.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/7/does-buildi... ) that proves this. Transit does NOT decrease the travel time for cars ("traffic") it _increases_ it by increasing congestion due to increased housing density that transit forces.

You want to pack people into 3x3 jails ("microapartments")? Fine. But be honest about it.

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

#604

Post by cyberax »

yunwal wrote: post #497
cyberax wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uhhhhhh what. What does every 10 minutes have to do with this at all See the word "effective". Think about the road space that a bus requires but doesn't use if it is just once per 10 minutes. > 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 the same time, and therefore don't make up 20% of the passengers on the bus. Y…

So where is the 20% of passengers are drivers thing even coming from?

3/(3+15) = 3/18 = 1/6 ~= 20%

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

#605

Post by tcoff91 »

coryrc wrote: post #600
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chicago has already done all of those things unfortunately (or fortunately).

If they have bus-only lanes then they won't be stuck in traffic, so I don't think they have.

Yeah if they aren't enforcing the bus-only aspect then it's not really a bus-only lane. If a bus only lane exists but people violate it in cars with impunity then obviously it's not going to work.

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

#606

Post by cyberax »

gbbgbbgbb wrote: post #492
cyberax wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uhhhhhh what. What does every 10 minutes have to do with this at all See the word "effective". Think about the road space that a bus requires but doesn't use if it is just once per 10 minutes. > 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 the same time, and therefore don't make up 20% of the passengers on the bus. Y…

> See the word "effective". Think about the road space that a bus requires but doesn't use if it is just once per 10 minutes. Excepting the case of a dedicated bus lane, the amount of road space a bus is preventing other cars from taking up at a given time is equal to the size of the bus. Technically, it's less than that in the case of bus stops littered amongst parking. In the case of a dedicated lane, it reduces th…

I actually am citing the traffic engineering handbook, the section about computing the efficacy of bus lanes. And I'm using deliberately conservative estimates.

> If there is an average of 15 passengers on the bus during the operations of the bus and there is an average of 1 driver on the bus during the operations of the bus, then it is 1/16th occupied by driver(s)

No. For the bus to be viable, all 3 drivers have to be "virtually present" there. A bus _has_ to be available at all times with a reasonable interval, otherwise it might as well not exist.

Or in other words, a passenger needs to be paying the salary for even the missing drivers.

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

#607

Post by coryrc »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #598
philwelch wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses are implicitly subsidized by road maintenance spending. Road wear and tear occurs according to the fourth power of axle weight, which effectively means almost all of the wear and tear is incurred by the heaviest vehicles, which include buses.

Axle weight and vehicle weight aren't the same (or even very closely correlated). A bus will weight ~3-4x more than a car, but has wider tires, and carrying far more people. As such the weight of a bus is likely similar to or lower than an equivalent number of cars.

Wider tires do not reduce axle weight.

Here in Seattle, the busy roads with older lanes used for buses are obvious, because they have two deep canyons while the lane next to them is fine. In fact King County Metro has to pay millions in fines to the state because the buses are excessively heavy.

No roads without bus traffic have the same type of damage.

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

#608

Post by coryrc »

Retric wrote: post #429
philwelch wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses are implicitly subsidized by road maintenance spending. Road wear and tear occurs according to the fourth power of axle weight, which effectively means almost all of the wear and tear is incurred by the heaviest vehicles, which include buses.

Roads still need maintenance even if nobody uses them, so a significant portion is split evenly across all traffic. Busses are light compared to 18 wheelers and other heavy equipment, they also replace many cars and SUV’s which keep getting heavier. Finally that rule of thumb isn’t really that accurate, “A 1988 report by the Australian Road Research Board stated that the rule is a good approximation for rutting damag…

> Roads still need maintenance even if nobody uses them, so a significant portion is split evenly across all traffic.

Your former doesn't imply the latter. Here in Seattle we even still have cobblestone roads without heavy traffic and they spend very little money on them.

We have extensive rutting damage on the lanes use by busses and requires more expensive, deeper road base when they get replaced. This cost is due to the heavy traffic.

Even if squared, the buses are still 22 tons instead of 2-3 tons. 49 times more damage isn't good.

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

#609

Post by Retric »

coryrc wrote: post #608
Retric wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads still need maintenance even if nobody uses them, so a significant portion is split evenly across all traffic. Busses are light compared to 18 wheelers and other heavy equipment, they also replace many cars and SUV’s which keep getting heavier. Finally that rule of thumb isn’t really that accurate, “A 1988 report by the Australian Road Research Board stated that the rule is a good approximation for rutting damag…

> Roads still need maintenance even if nobody uses them, so a significant portion is split evenly across all traffic. Your former doesn't imply the latter. Here in Seattle we even still have cobblestone roads without heavy traffic and they spend very little money on them. We have extensive rutting damage on the lanes use by busses and requires more expensive, deeper road base when they get replaced. This cost is due…

22 tons are huge busses and overkill unless you actually need that much space, and tend to have 4 axles. ((22 / 4)/(3/2)) ~= 13.5x a heavy SUV but could be replacing 30+ vehicles.

Also that visible ware is noticeable because it hasn’t been replaced. Looking worse when you resurface on the same schedule isn’t an actual cost.

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

#610

Post by hardolaf »

LucasBrandt wrote: post #165
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…

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…

I also live in Chicago but unlike you, I have musculoskeletal issues that can be minor to the point of not noticing or to the point of it being painful to walk more than 2-3 blocks at a time. So doubling the distance between blocks would be the difference between me being able to use the bus and me needing to drive or use the far more expensive for taxpayers paratransit service.

And beyond that, the 6% of average time savings seen in studies of similar systems would be about the same improvement as adding curb bump outs which would save the bus time by not needing to repeatedly merge back into traffic. And that work is already happening across the city without inconveniencing anyone or causing users with disabilities from being discriminated against by armchair urban planners.

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