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Those numbers are just the operating costs, which scale much more closely with the number of riders, the cost of the building the infrastructure itself isn't in

Those numbers are just the operating costs, which scale much more closely with the number of riders, the cost of the building the infrastructure itself isn't included. Including the capital costs would make transit look even worse.

bluGill 5y ago
That is false, Transit costs go down per rider as things go up. The cost to operate a bus is just over $100/hr in the US (average), including capital costs. It doesn't matter if only the driver is on the bus or it is packed full. It doesn't mater if everyone is riding for an entire hour or they only ride for 5 minutes. The cost operating costs for a train can be much less (a train can be fully automated which really brings costs down), or much more (if you run drivers and conductors). However as until the train is full requiring that you buy more the costs do not change at all. Roads have similar concerns - the cost to build and maintain a road is mostly fixed, but it scales to much slower. A full bus every 5 minutes has far more people than the same road with the maximum number of moving cars, so you need to build more roads faster, thus the capital costs of roads is much higher.
- quantumwannabe 5y ago
  If you have more people who want to ride a bus than the bus can carry, then you need another bus and driver. That is a step function that scales with the number of riders. What you said is only true until the bus reaches capacity, but if people actually use the transit (which is not the case in most of the US, but is the case in the area my numbers are from), then the cost is directly related to the number of riders. Also, most buses don't have 5 minute headways, so if you're going to assume that you may as well assume that every car contains 4 people. Additionally, a 100 person articulated bus coming every 5 minutes is equivalent to 20 single occupancy cars per minute (or 1 car every 3 seconds), which is typical for a busy street. You need really short headways to match a car lane, shorter headways to beat it, and even shorter headways to justify making the lane exclusive to buses.

bluGill 5y ago

That is false, Transit costs go down per rider as things go up. The cost to operate a bus is just over $100/hr in the US (average), including capital costs. It doesn't matter if only the driver is on the bus or it is packed full. It doesn't mater if everyone is riding for an entire hour or they only ride for 5 minutes. The cost operating costs for a train can be much less (a train can be fully automated which really brings costs down), or much more (if you run drivers and conductors). However as until the train is full requiring that you buy more the costs do not change at all. Roads have similar concerns - the cost to build and maintain a road is mostly fixed, but it scales to much slower. A full bus every 5 minutes has far more people than the same road with the maximum number of moving cars, so you need to build more roads faster, thus the capital costs of roads is much higher.

quantumwannabe 5y ago
If you have more people who want to ride a bus than the bus can carry, then you need another bus and driver. That is a step function that scales with the number of riders. What you said is only true until the bus reaches capacity, but if people actually use the transit (which is not the case in most of the US, but is the case in the area my numbers are from), then the cost is directly related to the number of riders. Also, most buses don't have 5 minute headways, so if you're going to assume that you may as well assume that every car contains 4 people. Additionally, a 100 person articulated bus coming every 5 minutes is equivalent to 20 single occupancy cars per minute (or 1 car every 3 seconds), which is typical for a busy street. You need really short headways to match a car lane, shorter headways to beat it, and even shorter headways to justify making the lane exclusive to buses.