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Oooh fun thought exercise - My guess is about four cars equal the annoyance of a bus over the span of a year. Four randomized drivers will on average be slightl

Oooh fun thought exercise - My guess is about four cars equal the annoyance of a bus over the span of a year. Four randomized drivers will on average be slightly more annoying than an average year for one bus. Taking into account: 1) Number of drivers removed from the roads by average annual bus use 2) Size of the vehicles 3) Random acts of annoyance 4) Dangers posed by each To confess my bias - I'm a huge fan of mass transit and a bike commuter who touches his car maybe once a week, but curious how else one might model this.

blackhaz 11y ago
I beg to differ. It doesn't remove that many cars, really. How often do you see a bus pass by? Every 20 minutes or so? Count how many cars pass by in the same amount of time, and some of them carry multiple passengers. (I have no problems with buses here in Europe at all, just sayin'..)
- adt2bt 11y ago
  One could argue every passenger on a bus saves some fraction of a car trip. Even if the total number of car trips saved is a much smaller number than the total number of cars, there's a 'breakeven' point above which the pain of the buses is less than the pain of the bus passengers in cars. I bet in most cities, we've hit that breakeven point, regardless of bus behavior. <wild speculation> I bet that number is about 6 passengers per bus, excluding environmental concerns. </wild speculation>
  - devin 11y ago
    Your wild speculation started earlier than your last line.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  What? You can compare the ratio of busses to cars to determine how many cars the bus removed from the road. The number of cars removed from the road per bus is not dependent on the number of other cars on the road. The number of cars removed is dependent on how many people ride in each bus and how many people ride in each car.
  - Tempest1981 11y ago
    blackhaz didn't say it, but is probably thinking there are hundreds of cars per bus. My mental image was a bus with 10-20 people, vs. 500 cars (in that 20 minutes)
    - ergothus 11y ago
      The logic still doesn't stand. If it's, say, 20 people, you shouldn't be comparing 1 car to 500 cars, you should be considering 1 bus to 20 cars.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  I think a good way to estimate it is to get a graph where you have average number of people in a bus at a time, then compare that to the average amount of people that are in a car at a time. people_in_bus/average_#_people_in_cars = #_of_cars_removed_at_this_moment . Of course the model can be made significantly more complicated, but it's a good starting point.
superuser2 11y ago
By the bus's frequent stops and lumbering acceleration, I'd estimate it cuts the average speed behind it by at least half. Unclear how far down the road this effect travels, but a significant distance. I've also yet to see a bus stop that doesn't obstruct the bike lane, so apply this effect to bikes as well. Sometimes (though rarely) the bus stop is such that the bus can pull out of the traffic lane and become less of an obstruction, but even then, right turns are delayed significantly. I don't mind this when I see a full bus, because I know that many private cars would slow down traffic at least as much. But damn is it annoying when the bus has 3 people on it (as is usually the case in my non-transit-oriented city).
- _delirium 11y ago
  > I've also yet to see a bus stop that doesn't obstruct the bike lane They're fairly common in a lot of places, though only recently being built in the US, because they typically go together with having protected bike lanes, which were almost unknown in the US until recently. Here's a fairly typical example from Copenhagen (you can see that the bike lane passes behind the bus stop): https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6757297,12.5451953,3a,15y,46.12h,85.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2LSkZ4qZf-j34KNh0w2zkQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6757297,12.5451953,3a,15y,46...
  - ajmurmann 11y ago
    Mh, that seems like it would move the problem to now be a conflict between bike and bus passengers
    - _delirium 11y ago
      It's not usually an issue, though it does require having norms that both pedestrians and bicyclists follow. In Denmark, at least, there are two kinds of bus stops. At ones like this one, which have an island between the bike lane and road, passengers cross the bike lane whenever there's a break in bike traffic, and wait on the island for the bus. Then actual bus loading/unloading is directly to the island and doesn't cross the bike lane. In other cases, where there isn't a waiting island, passengers wait on the sidewalk and do have to cross the bike lane to board/unboard. In those cases, there's a zebra stripe painted on the bike lane in the area where passengers are supposed to cross, and bicyclists must stop before the stripe whenever a bus is present with open doors. So in those cases a bus stopping does interrupt bicycle traffic, though not by the bus actually entering the bike lane. That looks like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754034,12.5457476,3a,75y,165.22h,78.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sk3P6WrAyfzRhRppb6ALSSg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754034,12.5457476,3a,75y,16...

blackhaz 11y ago

I beg to differ. It doesn't remove that many cars, really. How often do you see a bus pass by? Every 20 minutes or so? Count how many cars pass by in the same amount of time, and some of them carry multiple passengers. (I have no problems with buses here in Europe at all, just sayin'..)

adt2bt 11y ago
One could argue every passenger on a bus saves some fraction of a car trip. Even if the total number of car trips saved is a much smaller number than the total number of cars, there's a 'breakeven' point above which the pain of the buses is less than the pain of the bus passengers in cars. I bet in most cities, we've hit that breakeven point, regardless of bus behavior. <wild speculation> I bet that number is about 6 passengers per bus, excluding environmental concerns. </wild speculation>
- devin 11y ago
  Your wild speculation started earlier than your last line.
cortesoft 11y ago
What? You can compare the ratio of busses to cars to determine how many cars the bus removed from the road. The number of cars removed from the road per bus is not dependent on the number of other cars on the road. The number of cars removed is dependent on how many people ride in each bus and how many people ride in each car.
- Tempest1981 11y ago
  blackhaz didn't say it, but is probably thinking there are hundreds of cars per bus. My mental image was a bus with 10-20 people, vs. 500 cars (in that 20 minutes)
  - ergothus 11y ago
    The logic still doesn't stand. If it's, say, 20 people, you shouldn't be comparing 1 car to 500 cars, you should be considering 1 bus to 20 cars.
mahyarm 11y ago
I think a good way to estimate it is to get a graph where you have average number of people in a bus at a time, then compare that to the average amount of people that are in a car at a time. people_in_bus/average_#_people_in_cars = #_of_cars_removed_at_this_moment . Of course the model can be made significantly more complicated, but it's a good starting point.

superuser2 11y ago

By the bus's frequent stops and lumbering acceleration, I'd estimate it cuts the average speed behind it by at least half. Unclear how far down the road this effect travels, but a significant distance. I've also yet to see a bus stop that doesn't obstruct the bike lane, so apply this effect to bikes as well. Sometimes (though rarely) the bus stop is such that the bus can pull out of the traffic lane and become less of an obstruction, but even then, right turns are delayed significantly. I don't mind this when I see a full bus, because I know that many private cars would slow down traffic at least as much. But damn is it annoying when the bus has 3 people on it (as is usually the case in my non-transit-oriented city).

_delirium 11y ago
> I've also yet to see a bus stop that doesn't obstruct the bike lane They're fairly common in a lot of places, though only recently being built in the US, because they typically go together with having protected bike lanes, which were almost unknown in the US until recently. Here's a fairly typical example from Copenhagen (you can see that the bike lane passes behind the bus stop): https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6757297,12.5451953,3a,15y,46.12h,85.84t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2LSkZ4qZf-j34KNh0w2zkQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6757297,12.5451953,3a,15y,46...
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  Mh, that seems like it would move the problem to now be a conflict between bike and bus passengers
  - _delirium 11y ago
    It's not usually an issue, though it does require having norms that both pedestrians and bicyclists follow. In Denmark, at least, there are two kinds of bus stops. At ones like this one, which have an island between the bike lane and road, passengers cross the bike lane whenever there's a break in bike traffic, and wait on the island for the bus. Then actual bus loading/unloading is directly to the island and doesn't cross the bike lane. In other cases, where there isn't a waiting island, passengers wait on the sidewalk and do have to cross the bike lane to board/unboard. In those cases, there's a zebra stripe painted on the bike lane in the area where passengers are supposed to cross, and bicyclists must stop before the stripe whenever a bus is present with open doors. So in those cases a bus stopping does interrupt bicycle traffic, though not by the bus actually entering the bike lane. That looks like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754034,12.5457476,3a,75y,165.22h,78.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sk3P6WrAyfzRhRppb6ALSSg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1 https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6754034,12.5457476,3a,75y,16...