91–100 of 656 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it outweigh you having to stop half as often?
All that means is longer lines and congestion of people waiting to board. So the bus is stopped for longer. This seems like a net nothing to me.
True I've seen that first hand.
> increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet [...] to 1,300 feet I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership. This feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Also, the example given cites New York City buses. But New York City is always the worst example because it's the most extreme of everything. The vast majority of US cities do not s…
We can optimize this further and remove all of the stops between the buses first and last stops. Drive time would be so much faster.
If you look at a high resolution density map of the world, you'll find great public transport in places that have at least 70K people in the square km around stops. At that density, you can often support subways profitably too. Then a mesh of subways and buses will get you to places quite efficiently. But then you look in the US, and the vast majority of our large metros have very few areas reaching those densities (Manhattan excluded). So you end up in situations where a bus or a light rail can neither be efficient nor cheap, no matter what you do with the bus stops. There's just not enough things near each stop, and even when they are close, it might not be even all that safe to cross the streets to reach your destination.
So while this might be a good optimization for places where we are close to good systems, I suspect that ultimately most cities need far more expensive changes to even consider having good transit
As someone who rides the bus: it's payment that causes slowdowns. Waiting for everyone to get on the front of the bus and tap often takes multiple traffic cycles. If we wanted to treat public transit as a true public good (as it ought to be), it should be funded from taxes and free at point of service, and then front and back can be used. But that'd be too much efficiency and cost the rich too much. This article feel…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would it outweigh you having to stop half as often?
All that means is longer lines and congestion of people waiting to board. So the bus is stopped for longer. This seems like a net nothing to me.
The real killer for bus travel times is not getting up to speed, and the delay from finding a break in traffic when pulling out of a stop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only because you know your loss but cannot imagine your gains in time.
The gains just mean that I sit on the bus while twice as many people are trying to board at every stop. The bus is stopped for twice as long.
> increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet [...] to 1,300 feet I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership. This feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Also, the example given cites New York City buses. But New York City is always the worst example because it's the most extreme of everything. The vast majority of US cities do not s…
Nyc has a subway for longer trips. So shorter stops make sense as anyone with a longer trip should be on the subway. However most cities (in the world) are not dense enough to support almost redundant system and in those I believe the speed optimizationis correct. time is important to bus riders, speeding up the buses helps them. It also attracts others. Only a few are harmed more than helped - but they tend to compl…
That’s not how bus routes in NYC are organized at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can optimize this further and remove all of the stops between the buses first and last stops. Drive time would be so much faster.
We can also make the bus smaller. And to give the passengers more agency, we can let them drive it. Instead of paying bus fare every time they board, they can pay a larger up-front cost for this bus, and of course, ongoing gas & maintenance. To make sure they don't pose a danger to others, they can also purchase insurance, and of course have some sort of license to operate it.
I’d rather get to work half as quickly if it means I don’t have to listen to a druggie issue schizophrenic violent threats towards random women throughout my journey (occurred just last week on a tram in Melbourne). Other cities I’ve been to and used public transport in (NYC, Portland, San Francisco, Dallas, Sydney) have been just as awful.
All these public policy wonks really do seem to forget that most of us want to get as far away as possible from the psychos that seem to make up an increasing share of society, time and cost be damned.
> increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet [...] to 1,300 feet I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership. This feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Also, the example given cites New York City buses. But New York City is always the worst example because it's the most extreme of everything. The vast majority of US cities do not s…
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 each bus stop, so when I need to wait for bit longer I prefer to walk to the next bus stop, just to have something to do.