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When I see things like: > Bus speeds also increased after the tolls were turned on. The Manhattan-bound B39 bus, which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge, ran 28%

by jefftk 2y ago

When I see things like: > Bus speeds also increased after the tolls were turned on. The Manhattan-bound B39 bus, which crosses the Williamsburg Bridge, ran 28% faster compared to a similar January week last year. Other buses like the SIM24 and and the M50 saw increases in speeds, as well. I wonder how much cherry picking there is. Did they give the B39 because it's the most improved? Or for some other reason (especially busy?) (Generally strongly in favor of congestion pricing)

btheunissen 2y ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was across the board for buses into lower Manhattan/around bridges into Manhattan. When living in cities I usually use both buses and trains but when living in NYC I tried to avoid buses when possible as you are at the behest of an insane amount of traffic usually; meaning you can’t reliably be places on time if you are using the bus.
- jon_richards 2y ago
  I like the theory of traffic that basically says traffic will always make the best mode of transportation as bad as the second best. The problem with buses is that car traffic can never be bad enough to make cars worse than buses. Buses are doomed to always be worse than cars unless they have dedicated lanes or parking is unbearable. So cars slow down to equal the metro system, bikes, ferries, etc. A dedicated bus lane can speed up cars more than another car lane because it pulls traffic off the road until driving convenience equals bus convenience.
post-it 2y ago
I parse it as implying that B39 had the highest percentage improvement.
nine_k 2y ago
I think B39 is a good example of an improvement most affected by the congestion pricing. It's a very short route, with very few stops, and the principal part of the route being the Williamsburg bridge. The rest of both Brooklyn and Manhattan traffic affects it rather little. I think that "cherry-picking" is when you find outliers and show them off pretending they are typical examples. What I would call this is maybe a "poster child": a specially chosen example where the result is most dramatic and clearly seen.
- jon_richards 2y ago
  I’d say a cherry picked example is backed by random chance (possibly counter to the trend) while a poster child example has an explanation (not necessarily correct) for being the most sensitive to the variable being changed.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
We will get better stats as the data rolls in over the next several months, but is very unlikely this is cherry picked or unrepresentative of the broad benefits of less congestion. In fact, I anticipate the city to expand dedicated bus lanes and bus frequency to take advantage of the reduced car traffic. Bike lanes too. Mass transit should steadily improve over the next year as enhancements made possible by less cars are deployed.
Twirrim 2y ago
Not sure if NYC would do the same stunt, but London saw an amazing improvement in traffic flow after congestion charge was introduced. Turned out for several months prior to it they'd been slowly shifting the timing of lights to make things less optimal, and then reverted the day congestion charge went live.
- occz 2y ago
  What a weird thing to lie about.
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Would you have a source for this?
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    Various buttholes, presumably. Anyone who has ever tried to adjust the phase of a traffic signal can tell you that sneaking little changes, all over a large city, is fantasy.
    - jonathan_landy 2y ago
      You’ve done this sort of work? There are a few in Berkeley I would like to try my hand at…
  - Twirrim 2y ago
    This was over 20 years ago, not sure what I'll be able to find. This one is a bit frothing at the teeth, but I do recall a few others from after the congestion charge was introduced. It ended up being a minor controversy, and I could have sworn I read confirmation from later on, after the Ken Livingstone was no longer Mayor. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-livingstone-has-brought-congestion-to-capital-179564.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how... And then from not long after it was introduced, you can see the AA blathering about it again: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2967852.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2967852.stm side note because I'm getting down votes: I'm one of those strongly in favour of congestion charges. I believe they made an improvement in London and not just because of these stunts. Of particular value was shifting a bunch of large vehicles to off-peak.
epistasis 2y ago
For a lot of systems, what you want to "cherry pick" and focus on are those 90th-percentile outliers, because they cause the most pain.
throw0101a 2y ago
> I wonder how much cherry picking there is. Did they give the B39 because it's the most improved? Or for some other reason (especially busy?) The allocation of bridge space to cars is entirely wasteful: > If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907. > Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily. * https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-and-wasteful-present-of-the-brooklyn-bridge https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an... Transport trucks, or folks in the trades, may necessary for commerce and logistics, may still be needed† but private car transportation? † Or you could ship in goods via rail and do local distribution via smaller trucks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Line

by jefftk 2y ago

btheunissen 2y ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was across the board for buses into lower Manhattan/around bridges into Manhattan. When living in cities I usually use both buses and trains but when living in NYC I tried to avoid buses when possible as you are at the behest of an insane amount of traffic usually; meaning you can’t reliably be places on time if you are using the bus.

jon_richards 2y ago
I like the theory of traffic that basically says traffic will always make the best mode of transportation as bad as the second best. The problem with buses is that car traffic can never be bad enough to make cars worse than buses. Buses are doomed to always be worse than cars unless they have dedicated lanes or parking is unbearable. So cars slow down to equal the metro system, bikes, ferries, etc. A dedicated bus lane can speed up cars more than another car lane because it pulls traffic off the road until driving convenience equals bus convenience.

post-it 2y ago

I parse it as implying that B39 had the highest percentage improvement.

nine_k 2y ago

I think B39 is a good example of an improvement most affected by the congestion pricing. It's a very short route, with very few stops, and the principal part of the route being the Williamsburg bridge. The rest of both Brooklyn and Manhattan traffic affects it rather little. I think that "cherry-picking" is when you find outliers and show them off pretending they are typical examples. What I would call this is maybe a "poster child": a specially chosen example where the result is most dramatic and clearly seen.

jon_richards 2y ago
I’d say a cherry picked example is backed by random chance (possibly counter to the trend) while a poster child example has an explanation (not necessarily correct) for being the most sensitive to the variable being changed.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

We will get better stats as the data rolls in over the next several months, but is very unlikely this is cherry picked or unrepresentative of the broad benefits of less congestion. In fact, I anticipate the city to expand dedicated bus lanes and bus frequency to take advantage of the reduced car traffic. Bike lanes too. Mass transit should steadily improve over the next year as enhancements made possible by less cars are deployed.

Twirrim 2y ago

Not sure if NYC would do the same stunt, but London saw an amazing improvement in traffic flow after congestion charge was introduced. Turned out for several months prior to it they'd been slowly shifting the timing of lights to make things less optimal, and then reverted the day congestion charge went live.

occz 2y ago
What a weird thing to lie about.
teractiveodular 2y ago
Would you have a source for this?
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Various buttholes, presumably. Anyone who has ever tried to adjust the phase of a traffic signal can tell you that sneaking little changes, all over a large city, is fantasy.
  - jonathan_landy 2y ago
    You’ve done this sort of work? There are a few in Berkeley I would like to try my hand at…
- Twirrim 2y ago
  This was over 20 years ago, not sure what I'll be able to find. This one is a bit frothing at the teeth, but I do recall a few others from after the congestion charge was introduced. It ended up being a minor controversy, and I could have sworn I read confirmation from later on, after the Ken Livingstone was no longer Mayor. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-livingstone-has-brought-congestion-to-capital-179564.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how... And then from not long after it was introduced, you can see the AA blathering about it again: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2967852.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2967852.stm side note because I'm getting down votes: I'm one of those strongly in favour of congestion charges. I believe they made an improvement in London and not just because of these stunts. Of particular value was shifting a bunch of large vehicles to off-peak.

epistasis 2y ago

For a lot of systems, what you want to "cherry pick" and focus on are those 90th-percentile outliers, because they cause the most pain.

throw0101a 2y ago

> I wonder how much cherry picking there is. Did they give the B39 because it's the most improved? Or for some other reason (especially busy?) The allocation of bridge space to cars is entirely wasteful: > If the job of the Brooklyn Bridge is to move people between the two boroughs, the reallocation of space from transit to cars has been disastrous. In 1902, one year before the photograph was taken, the Brooklyn Bridge moved roughly 341,000 people a day across all its modes, according to the Federal Highway Administration. It hit its peak capacity a few years later, with 426,000 people using it each day in 1907. > Today, 125,000 motor vehicles cross the Brooklyn Bridge each day [PDF], as do roughly 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 cyclists. For the bridge to carry as many people as it did at its peak, each of those cars would need to carry more than three people, but they do not. In 1989, when the city counted around 132,000 motor vehicles crossing, the FHWA estimated that 178,000 people crossed the bridge daily. * https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-and-wasteful-present-of-the-brooklyn-bridge https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/04/11/the-efficient-past-an... Transport trucks, or folks in the trades, may necessary for commerce and logistics, may still be needed† but private car transportation? † Or you could ship in goods via rail and do local distribution via smaller trucks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Side_Line