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A bus with 50 people is 49 cars taken off the road. Even with a self driving carpool option the bus still takes off 9 other vehicles (assuming 5 passengers in
by so33 9y ago
A bus with 50 people is 49 cars taken off the road.
Even with a self driving carpool option the bus still takes off 9 other vehicles (assuming 5 passengers in a vehicle).
- ams6110 9y agoWhat is a 50-person bus with 1 passenger aboard? That is a very common sight in my town. There are a few routes that are heavily used, but the rest of them are just huge vehicles very inefficiently transporting a couple of people and blocking lanes of traffic and frustrating drivers at the same time.
- lemoncucumber 9y agoSounds like your town should consider following the example of Houston's recent reimagining[1] of their bus system. "The old system, like many bus routes in the United States, expended a lot of resources on very low-ridership routes for the sake of saying there's 'a bus that goes there.' The new plan says the focus should be to provide reasonably frequent service on routes where reasonably frequent service will attract riders. That does mean that some people are further than ever from a transit stop. But it means that many more Houstonians will find themselves near a useful transit stop." [1] https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8056039/houston-transit-reimagining https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8056039/houston-transit-reimag...
- awalton 9y ago> What is a 50-person bus with 1 passenger aboard? A poorly designed bus route. But, that's not surprising giving the state of urban sprawl; it's quite a hard problem to design a route that maintains ridership, simply because everything that people need access to is so spread out and randomized that people will prefer cars/lyft and 15 minutes of travel time to taking three buses over 50 minutes and then walking the last mile to get to where they want to go. Bus agencies could do better if they were a bit more adaptable/flexible too - other countries have experimented with bus-on-demand, and having smaller buses ("shuttles") would help on lower demand routes. But it's already hard enough for these transit agencies to maintain budgets when ridership is so poor that it's difficult for them to spend money to try something new - it's a self-defeating cycle.
- DrScump 9y ago"Bus agencies could do better if they were a bit more adaptable/flexible too - other countries have experimented with bus-on-demand, and having smaller buses ("shuttles") would help on lower demand routes" Has that worked (financially) anywhere? This model was a catastrophic failure when tried in Santa Clara County ("Dial-a-ride").
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- flycaliguy 9y agoIt’s an expense paid for by the city to provide municiple services to as many tax payers as needed. People rely on the bus. Seniors, disabled, young people. A city provides these services and sometimes it looks like one person on a bus.