6 ms·

you still have to get to bus stop

Retric 3y ago
So walking 100-200 feet vs waiting longer, entering your destination, paying more even after checking multiple apps for pricing… I am not in great shape but I know which I prefer.
- alooPotato 3y ago
  show me an american city where a bus stops every 100-200 feet every 3 mins. Heck show me where it'd even be possible in an american city. That sounds like the most inefficient bus ever.
  - Retric 3y ago
    That’s a bus stop every ~1/8th of a mile not 200 feet. You cut it in half because you can walk to the closest stop and cut it in half again before you’re starting at a random point not the worst possibility so 5280/8/2/2 = 165 feet. Except we don’t exit buildings or get on busses in the middle of the street so it’s not random.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Any bus that has stops every 100-200 feet is unbearably slow. Even every 1/8 of a mile is too much to be an time efficient mode of transportation unless you have BRT imo.
  - sk0g 3y ago
    (On average), for a walk to the stop of 100-200 feet the bus would need to stop every 200-400 feet. 300 ft seems to be roughly 100m, which is probably much too short a distance still. 250m or ~800 ft aligns better to my experience with cities with good transit, and in the worst case scenario you have to walk 125m to your nearest stop.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Almost. 1/8th of a mile is every 660 feet, but the farthest you can be from one is the midpoint so 330 feet. However for every trip starting at the midpoint there’s another at and the bus stop thus the average would be 1/2 that distance again or 165 feet. Assuming a 1D world, you can beat this in practice.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 3y ago
    I’ve said it several times but you average ~165 feet when walking to a stop every 1/8th of a mile. Max is 1/2 the distance because you can walk either direction and average is again 1/2 the max because you start at a random point not the worst possibility. 5280/8/2/2 = 165. As to unbearably slow, there’s this idea of express busses and buss only lanes etc. The core of cities really isn’t that big, it takes forever because traffic is slow or mass transit is infrequent.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      Fair enough. Not familiar with SF bus system but the bus system where I live, which is considered quite good I think, has each bus line 1/2 mile apart from each other. Almost no one lives directly along a route so there's an extra 1/8 mile average walk just to get to the route, not a stop on it. Fine by me but a lot of people don't seem capable of that for whatever reason. Combine that with the bus not actually going to where you're trying to get and I can see why people aren't huge fans.
      - lozenge 3y ago
        The reason is usually that they need a car for some journey, once they have paid that fixed cost, they may as well use it for more journeys.
    - ytpete 3y ago
      All these calculations are only true if your destination is on the road the bus runs along. Since not every road has a bus line, you also usually have to walk multiple blocks perpendicular _away_ from the bus line in addition to some of the distance between stops.
      - Retric 3y ago
        If your road doesn’t have a bus line then that’s a problem not an inherent limitation. Ideally you want a grid where bus lines are near intersections so going from North to East means crossing 1 street so you can go anywhere with 2 waits and a street crossing.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Busses around me don't stop at every stop, only if there are people waiting at the stop or someone has requested a stop by pressing a strip along the windows or one of the almost dozen buttons on the bus.
tbcj 3y ago
In September, the rides I took in Cruise required walking farther than multiple bus stops.
inferiorhuman 3y ago
In San Francisco the current standard is 800–1,360 ft between bus stops depending on the grade. Street car stops are every 2–3 blocks. The MTA's spent years trying to cull stops because many are much closer than that, so no… walking to a Muni stop in San Francisco is perhaps one of the easiest things you can do in the city. Edit: ca. 2008 the policy was 800–1,000 ft for bus stops and 1,000–1,200 ft for street car stops. On grades between 10–15% the standard is 500–600 ft for bus stops, and on grades above 15% the standard is 300–400 ft. Trunk routes have 24x7 service, and (I can't find it now) there are standards about the amount of service on the other routes but it's something along the lines of 80% of residences are supposed to have frequent service ~18 hours a day and reduced service in the wee hours. Currently the tightest headway I can find is 8 minutes for travel during peak hours along the busiest routes. Muni is often inefficient but it can get you pretty much anywhere in the city (including places you can't walk to like Treasure Island) for most of the day. Edit: For reference San Francisco is roughly 7 miles by 7 miles. So you're talking about transiting halfway across town. Cars (with or without drivers) are competing for the same right of way as the bus, so more of them will simply slow everyone down. A 60ft bus can fit, what, about 100 people? A self-driving car can fit, what, 5? The current quantity of Lyft/Uber/Waymo/Cruise vehicles already has a negative impact on traffic. Put enough self driving cars on the street to make up for the capacity that buses provide and you're going to make traffic much, much worse.
- alooPotato 3y ago
  Two really popular locations, 3 miles apart, with a direct bus route servicing them and still 40 min travel time. This doesn't work: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dolores+Park,+Dolores+St+%26,+19th+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94114/Marina+District,+San+Francisco,+CA/@37.7768012,-122.4338673,14.93z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f7e1779aa70a7:0xa618e4eff1228d60!2m2!1d-122.4271145!2d37.7597704!1m5!1m1!1s0x808580d79ae5a51b:0x3c50fe8f3930832!2m2!1d-122.4370011!2d37.8043849!3e3?hl=en&entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dolores+Park,+Dolores+St+%26... I'd argue that we'll be able to make this much better with driverless cars than with public transit.
  - Panzer04 3y ago

So walking 100-200 feet vs waiting longer, entering your destination, paying more even after checking multiple apps for pricing… I am not in great shape but I know which I prefer.

alooPotato 3y ago
show me an american city where a bus stops every 100-200 feet every 3 mins. Heck show me where it'd even be possible in an american city. That sounds like the most inefficient bus ever.
- Retric 3y ago
  That’s a bus stop every ~1/8th of a mile not 200 feet. You cut it in half because you can walk to the closest stop and cut it in half again before you’re starting at a random point not the worst possibility so 5280/8/2/2 = 165 feet. Except we don’t exit buildings or get on busses in the middle of the street so it’s not random.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
Any bus that has stops every 100-200 feet is unbearably slow. Even every 1/8 of a mile is too much to be an time efficient mode of transportation unless you have BRT imo.
- sk0g 3y ago
  (On average), for a walk to the stop of 100-200 feet the bus would need to stop every 200-400 feet. 300 ft seems to be roughly 100m, which is probably much too short a distance still. 250m or ~800 ft aligns better to my experience with cities with good transit, and in the worst case scenario you have to walk 125m to your nearest stop.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Almost. 1/8th of a mile is every 660 feet, but the farthest you can be from one is the midpoint so 330 feet. However for every trip starting at the midpoint there’s another at and the bus stop thus the average would be 1/2 that distance again or 165 feet. Assuming a 1D world, you can beat this in practice.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 3y ago
  I’ve said it several times but you average ~165 feet when walking to a stop every 1/8th of a mile. Max is 1/2 the distance because you can walk either direction and average is again 1/2 the max because you start at a random point not the worst possibility. 5280/8/2/2 = 165. As to unbearably slow, there’s this idea of express busses and buss only lanes etc. The core of cities really isn’t that big, it takes forever because traffic is slow or mass transit is infrequent.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Fair enough. Not familiar with SF bus system but the bus system where I live, which is considered quite good I think, has each bus line 1/2 mile apart from each other. Almost no one lives directly along a route so there's an extra 1/8 mile average walk just to get to the route, not a stop on it. Fine by me but a lot of people don't seem capable of that for whatever reason. Combine that with the bus not actually going to where you're trying to get and I can see why people aren't huge fans.
    - lozenge 3y ago
      The reason is usually that they need a car for some journey, once they have paid that fixed cost, they may as well use it for more journeys.
  - ytpete 3y ago
    All these calculations are only true if your destination is on the road the bus runs along. Since not every road has a bus line, you also usually have to walk multiple blocks perpendicular _away_ from the bus line in addition to some of the distance between stops.
    - Retric 3y ago
      If your road doesn’t have a bus line then that’s a problem not an inherent limitation. Ideally you want a grid where bus lines are near intersections so going from North to East means crossing 1 street so you can go anywhere with 2 waits and a street crossing.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Busses around me don't stop at every stop, only if there are people waiting at the stop or someone has requested a stop by pressing a strip along the windows or one of the almost dozen buttons on the bus.

tbcj 3y ago

In September, the rides I took in Cruise required walking farther than multiple bus stops.

inferiorhuman 3y ago

In San Francisco the current standard is 800–1,360 ft between bus stops depending on the grade. Street car stops are every 2–3 blocks. The MTA's spent years trying to cull stops because many are much closer than that, so no… walking to a Muni stop in San Francisco is perhaps one of the easiest things you can do in the city. Edit: ca. 2008 the policy was 800–1,000 ft for bus stops and 1,000–1,200 ft for street car stops. On grades between 10–15% the standard is 500–600 ft for bus stops, and on grades above 15% the standard is 300–400 ft. Trunk routes have 24x7 service, and (I can't find it now) there are standards about the amount of service on the other routes but it's something along the lines of 80% of residences are supposed to have frequent service ~18 hours a day and reduced service in the wee hours. Currently the tightest headway I can find is 8 minutes for travel during peak hours along the busiest routes. Muni is often inefficient but it can get you pretty much anywhere in the city (including places you can't walk to like Treasure Island) for most of the day. Edit: For reference San Francisco is roughly 7 miles by 7 miles. So you're talking about transiting halfway across town. Cars (with or without drivers) are competing for the same right of way as the bus, so more of them will simply slow everyone down. A 60ft bus can fit, what, about 100 people? A self-driving car can fit, what, 5? The current quantity of Lyft/Uber/Waymo/Cruise vehicles already has a negative impact on traffic. Put enough self driving cars on the street to make up for the capacity that buses provide and you're going to make traffic much, much worse.

alooPotato 3y ago
Two really popular locations, 3 miles apart, with a direct bus route servicing them and still 40 min travel time. This doesn't work: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dolores+Park,+Dolores+St+%26,+19th+St,+San+Francisco,+CA+94114/Marina+District,+San+Francisco,+CA/@37.7768012,-122.4338673,14.93z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f7e1779aa70a7:0xa618e4eff1228d60!2m2!1d-122.4271145!2d37.7597704!1m5!1m1!1s0x808580d79ae5a51b:0x3c50fe8f3930832!2m2!1d-122.4370011!2d37.8043849!3e3?hl=en&entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Dolores+Park,+Dolores+St+%26... I'd argue that we'll be able to make this much better with driverless cars than with public transit.
- Panzer04 3y ago