6 ms·

Schedules are irrelevant when frequencies are high enough. If you look at the most successful public transport systems (e.g. in London, Paris and Berlin) trains

by NeoTar 3y ago

Schedules are irrelevant when frequencies are high enough. If you look at the most successful public transport systems (e.g. in London, Paris and Berlin) trains frequencies are often at least every ten minutes off-peak and can be every two-three minutes in the peak times. At those frequencies you can literally just turn-up and travel.

nightski 3y ago
This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to plan around them even though they generally would stop every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100% either. Occasionally they just don't show up. For trains that is great but you still have to get to/from the trains. Heck even bus stops require a 5-10 minute walk some times. So it's the walk to the bus stop, planning if the bus doesn't show up, the transit time which could include a lot of stops, and so forth. It really adds up to a lot of time lost.
- comte7092 3y ago
  Seattle has a pretty good bus system for the US but a pretty mediocre one globally. When we talk about “frequent enough” 15 minutes is an eternity, honestly it is the bare minimum for what could be considered frequent. Frequent is every 5-6 minutes. I’ve had commutes where the headway was 2 minutes. It doesn’t matter if the train/bus is late or doesn’t show up at that point.
  - nightski 3y ago
    Is there any evidence this works in anything but the largest cities? Because America is built on small towns/cities [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nation-of-small-towns.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nat...
    - comte7092 3y ago
      > America is built on small towns/cities There is this really strange mythology that persists around this. America is not built on small towns or cities any more than other countries, in fact it is generally much less so. 80% of the US population lives in urbanized areas. [0] Your citation is counting towns, but that doesn’t reflect the way Americans actually live, and if you think about it, that makes sense, the US can’t have millions of million plus cities. City population size is going to follow some sort of geometric/power law distribution. To answer your question, no one is advocating banning all cars outright. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta... For comparison, look at India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_India?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_India?wprov=sf...
      - nightski 3y ago
        If you looked at the article I referenced, only 40% of the population lives in cities larger than 50k (census.gov). I'd imagine it is a bit less than that if you look at cities over 500k which are still small in comparison (and would struggle with the public infrastructure being proposed here). Urban could mean anything and is not defined in the wikipedia article explicitly ("definition needed"). The article even says it's changing constantly. So it's not very useful when they give %'s without even saying what it means. Edit: Whether these boundaries are arbitrary or not is irrelevant as that is the tax base paying. Also the MSAs are defined as 10k or above. That's a really small tax base for such large infrastructure. Even my city of 250k would struggle a LOT providing any level of service like you are talking about. You need a 1M+ metro area to even consider it, and then providing full coverage is going to be difficult.
        comte7092 3y ago
        That’s because municipal boundaries are arbitrary, and a poor way to analyze human settlement patterns. Most of those small cities still lie within larger metro areas. If you look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area?... 226 million people live in the 108 metro areas over 500k as of the 2020 census. Fairview NJ may “only” have a population of 15k, but that doesn’t mean it is too small for public transportation.
- kiba 3y ago
  This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to plan around them even though they generally would stop every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100% either. Occasionally they just don't show up. 15 minutes is not frequent enough.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    15 minutes isn't frequent enough if you live a block or so away from the bus stop, but it's pretty damn frequent if you live on the same road as the bus stop. If they can figure out how to make buses that aren't loud enough to wake the dead then I'll change my mind. BTW I'm talking about diesel buses and electric trolley-buses. They're all loud.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      They should ask Berlin for advice. I've got a tram like right outside my window, and the trams are only audible right before the rails get ground back into shape; busses pass me regularly and I don't notice unless I'm looking. The sirens from the emergency vehicles on the other hand, those are probably part of the reason why I'm tired all the time.
      - NeoTar 3y ago
        Emergency sirens being so loud is an unfortunate consequence of how good sound isolation is in contemporary cars. Unfortunately I don’t know of an easy solution to this. Perhaps vehicles should be required to rebroadcast emergency sirens internally? Or maybe it will solve itself when electric cars reduce road noise.
        ben_w 3y ago
        I wish the alternate-woop-and-ksssh had replaced the simple siren in more than just construction sites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykmhi6bF4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykmhi6bF4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8
- yibg 3y ago
  That's not a good public transit. Personally I wouldn't consider any city in the US to have good public transit. Traveling around in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai for instance, I never even look at the train schedule unless it's very late at night (to make sure I can catch the last train).
- slashdev 3y ago
  Buses typically aren't frequent enough except on the most popular routes to just turn up without planning. Subways / light rail systems usually are frequent enough.
- noelwelsh 3y ago
  Seattle's public transport is not on the level of London or Paris. The stops are not close enough and the service is not frequent enough.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

by NeoTar 3y ago

nightski 3y ago

This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to plan around them even though they generally would stop every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100% either. Occasionally they just don't show up. For trains that is great but you still have to get to/from the trains. Heck even bus stops require a 5-10 minute walk some times. So it's the walk to the bus stop, planning if the bus doesn't show up, the transit time which could include a lot of stops, and so forth. It really adds up to a lot of time lost.

comte7092 3y ago
Seattle has a pretty good bus system for the US but a pretty mediocre one globally. When we talk about “frequent enough” 15 minutes is an eternity, honestly it is the bare minimum for what could be considered frequent. Frequent is every 5-6 minutes. I’ve had commutes where the headway was 2 minutes. It doesn’t matter if the train/bus is late or doesn’t show up at that point.
- nightski 3y ago
  Is there any evidence this works in anything but the largest cities? Because America is built on small towns/cities [1]. [1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nation-of-small-towns.html https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/05/america-a-nat...
  - comte7092 3y ago
    > America is built on small towns/cities There is this really strange mythology that persists around this. America is not built on small towns or cities any more than other countries, in fact it is generally much less so. 80% of the US population lives in urbanized areas. [0] Your citation is counting towns, but that doesn’t reflect the way Americans actually live, and if you think about it, that makes sense, the US can’t have millions of million plus cities. City population size is going to follow some sort of geometric/power law distribution. To answer your question, no one is advocating banning all cars outright. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta... For comparison, look at India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_India?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_India?wprov=sf...
    - nightski 3y ago
      If you looked at the article I referenced, only 40% of the population lives in cities larger than 50k (census.gov). I'd imagine it is a bit less than that if you look at cities over 500k which are still small in comparison (and would struggle with the public infrastructure being proposed here). Urban could mean anything and is not defined in the wikipedia article explicitly ("definition needed"). The article even says it's changing constantly. So it's not very useful when they give %'s without even saying what it means. Edit: Whether these boundaries are arbitrary or not is irrelevant as that is the tax base paying. Also the MSAs are defined as 10k or above. That's a really small tax base for such large infrastructure. Even my city of 250k would struggle a LOT providing any level of service like you are talking about. You need a 1M+ metro area to even consider it, and then providing full coverage is going to be difficult.
      - comte7092 3y ago
        That’s because municipal boundaries are arbitrary, and a poor way to analyze human settlement patterns. Most of those small cities still lie within larger metro areas. If you look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area?... 226 million people live in the 108 metro areas over 500k as of the 2020 census. Fairview NJ may “only” have a population of 15k, but that doesn’t mean it is too small for public transportation.
kiba 3y ago
This is not true in my experience, Seattle has a pretty solid bus system and we still felt like we were having to plan around them even though they generally would stop every 15 minutes. You could not count on them 100% either. Occasionally they just don't show up. 15 minutes is not frequent enough.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  15 minutes isn't frequent enough if you live a block or so away from the bus stop, but it's pretty damn frequent if you live on the same road as the bus stop. If they can figure out how to make buses that aren't loud enough to wake the dead then I'll change my mind. BTW I'm talking about diesel buses and electric trolley-buses. They're all loud.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    They should ask Berlin for advice. I've got a tram like right outside my window, and the trams are only audible right before the rails get ground back into shape; busses pass me regularly and I don't notice unless I'm looking. The sirens from the emergency vehicles on the other hand, those are probably part of the reason why I'm tired all the time.
    - NeoTar 3y ago
      Emergency sirens being so loud is an unfortunate consequence of how good sound isolation is in contemporary cars. Unfortunately I don’t know of an easy solution to this. Perhaps vehicles should be required to rebroadcast emergency sirens internally? Or maybe it will solve itself when electric cars reduce road noise.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        I wish the alternate-woop-and-ksssh had replaced the simple siren in more than just construction sites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykmhi6bF4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cykmhi6bF4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa28lIGuxq8
yibg 3y ago
That's not a good public transit. Personally I wouldn't consider any city in the US to have good public transit. Traveling around in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai for instance, I never even look at the train schedule unless it's very late at night (to make sure I can catch the last train).
slashdev 3y ago
Buses typically aren't frequent enough except on the most popular routes to just turn up without planning. Subways / light rail systems usually are frequent enough.
noelwelsh 3y ago
Seattle's public transport is not on the level of London or Paris. The stops are not close enough and the service is not frequent enough.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]