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> For example, taking the bus on a route with high ridership is usually more environmentally friendly than an e-scooter. To be precise, as an individual making

> For example, taking the bus on a route with high ridership is usually more environmentally friendly than an e-scooter. To be precise, as an individual making a choice how to get somewhere, taking the bus on a route with low ridership is also environmentally friendly. The decision to run the low-ridership bus on that route in the first place was not too environmentally friendly (unless it's a long-term play to build up the bus system), but that decision has already been made and the emissions are a sunk cost. If you get on a bus that's running anyway, the additional emissions are basically negligible. Obviously what they're trying to analyze is averages across a population, and they're right about that. But don't let it make you feel bad about riding a low-ridership bus.

wizzairflyer 7y ago
There's also the fact that maybe you wouldn't take the high-ridership bus/train that the low-ridership bus connects you to, but instead just car directly to your destination, resulting in higher overall emissions.
Theodores 7y ago
You can hop on any scheduled flight and say that the plane was flying anyway so there was no added environmental cost in you getting a seat. Low ridership buses can form part of a wider network where the busy parts of the network depend on the feeder services. Those feeder services also have to offer round the clock service if people are to be bothered using them. In the UK we got rid of the minor branch lines of the railway network thinking people would drive to their nearest station and complete their journey by rail. It never happened, people stayed in their cars and rail passenger numbers declined. You are never going to have a network with all seats filled at all times. Seen that way then a transport service is getting it wrong if it is always at 100% utilisation.
- adrianmonk 7y ago
  The airplane thing is interesting because planes are expensive (and airlines are for-profit), so they are careful about utilization and keep planes as close to full as practical. Which means if you board that plane, you are altering some stats that someone, somewhere is watching pretty closely. You could easily be helping to tip the balance toward adding another flight to that route or switching to a bigger plane for that flight. I don't know the right math, but I would assume this averages out to something near 1-to-1. That is, if, in the steady state, 1000 people take extra seats on airplanes, presumably it averages out to about 1000 seats of extra capacity being added. And I suppose the concept must apply to low-ridership bus lines. If you ride it, you could tip the balance toward keeping it going rather than canceling it or consolidating it together with other routes. Maybe this is a bit less than 1-to-1, though, because transit agencies aren't just following rider behavior but also trying to fulfill a mission to have good coverage of an area. TLDR, maybe it does matter if you're near a utilization threshold that someone is really paying attention to.

wizzairflyer 7y ago

There's also the fact that maybe you wouldn't take the high-ridership bus/train that the low-ridership bus connects you to, but instead just car directly to your destination, resulting in higher overall emissions.

Theodores 7y ago

You can hop on any scheduled flight and say that the plane was flying anyway so there was no added environmental cost in you getting a seat. Low ridership buses can form part of a wider network where the busy parts of the network depend on the feeder services. Those feeder services also have to offer round the clock service if people are to be bothered using them. In the UK we got rid of the minor branch lines of the railway network thinking people would drive to their nearest station and complete their journey by rail. It never happened, people stayed in their cars and rail passenger numbers declined. You are never going to have a network with all seats filled at all times. Seen that way then a transport service is getting it wrong if it is always at 100% utilisation.

adrianmonk 7y ago
The airplane thing is interesting because planes are expensive (and airlines are for-profit), so they are careful about utilization and keep planes as close to full as practical. Which means if you board that plane, you are altering some stats that someone, somewhere is watching pretty closely. You could easily be helping to tip the balance toward adding another flight to that route or switching to a bigger plane for that flight. I don't know the right math, but I would assume this averages out to something near 1-to-1. That is, if, in the steady state, 1000 people take extra seats on airplanes, presumably it averages out to about 1000 seats of extra capacity being added. And I suppose the concept must apply to low-ridership bus lines. If you ride it, you could tip the balance toward keeping it going rather than canceling it or consolidating it together with other routes. Maybe this is a bit less than 1-to-1, though, because transit agencies aren't just following rider behavior but also trying to fulfill a mission to have good coverage of an area. TLDR, maybe it does matter if you're near a utilization threshold that someone is really paying attention to.