4 ms·

Which city is that? bus travel is too slow I would expect travel to speed up when we move from cars to buses. Look at what cars do most of the time. Wait

by mg 2y ago

Which city is that? bus travel is too slow I would expect travel to speed up when we move from cars to buses. Look at what cars do most of the time. Waiting at crossings, slowing down for crossings, accelerating after passing a crossing. I have not measured it yet, but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each to accelerate that by a factor of 10 or so. and unreliable You mean when the bus is stuck in traffic? Don't you have the same problem with a car? people working 40h+ I would think people who work 40h would be happy if they could do their work in a nice electric bus with a table instead of spending that time handling a steering wheel.

rsynnott 2y ago
> but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each FWIW, that's a _tiny_ bus. Typical city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150. At peak time on important routes they'll generally be mostly full. The major capacity limit on buses is stopping. On busy systems at peak times, you'll tend to get clumping at stops, as similar routes line up one after another.
- mg 2y ago
  city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150 Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. I have took an extensive look at this over the last weeks. A typical articulated bus can only carry about 20 to 30 passengers who are seated as comfortably as in a private car. Partly that is because of the design of the buses. If the buses were redesigned to comfortably seat people, they could probably carry an additional 10 or 20 passengers who are comfortably seated.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    > Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. Oh, I missed that point. I mean, personally I'd say that any bus offers a better ride than driving a car, in that you do not have to _drive_ the thing, but tastes differ, of course. Ideally most urban bus routes would be short enough that healthy people can comfortably use them without sitting. Realistically, the costs of operating a bus are pretty fixed, and bus networks have hard space-based caps on capacity (as I mention elsewhere stops in particular are a problem), so the priority will always be on getting as many people in the space as possible. It's hard to see why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses; it would degrade the system as a whole, and the ticket price would be unreasonably high. Most people, also, will care more about "can I actually get on the bus for my 20 minute journey" than "if I get on, will I have a comfy seat", which tends to indicate a mostly-standing design with seating available for elderly and disabled people. As an example, take my local system. Dublin's main bus system has about 1,300 buses in operation; almost all of these are double-deckers with a capacity of 90-100 people. The system is pretty much limited by availability of drivers. Fares are 2 euro for a 90 minute journey (or where the last leg of the journey is started within 90 minutes of the first one). Adopting your system, we'd need five times as many buses, so for a start we'd need 6,500 buses, along with maybe 15,000 drivers and another 5,000 or so support staff. It's hard to see how that could happen without dramatically increasing the cost. But also, at peak times, major bus corridors are full of buses, and major bus stops have buses queueing up. It would simply not be reasonable to 5x this.
    - mg 2y ago
      why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses To get people to use the bus instead of a car. The average car costs €300/month. Plus about the same amount of opportunity costs, missed by having to control the steering wheel for about an hour per day. A public transport flatrate in Germany is only €59. Seems like there is a huge gap in the middle for a better bus experience. It would not degrade the system but wastly improve it. Because the buses would be additional buses. Each bus taking over 100 cars of the road. A bus can carry over 20 passengers and drive over 10 hours per day. While the average car ride carries 1.1 passengers or so and the car is only used 1 hour per day or so.
      - rsynnott 2y ago
        Okay, so you're talking about an additional premium/first class bus service, rather than a change to the existing service? I suspect that that is doomed, because class-segregated intraurban transport _used to be a thing_ (albeit largely on metro and commuter train services, not buses), and it's died out virtually everywhere in the world; when offered the choice of paying X or 3X for the same journey with better seating, people just don't want to do that for short journeys. For instance the Paris Metro system used to have a first class carriage, until I think the late 80s. And this would actually be worse, because you'd be talking about separate, likely less frequent buses. Most people will just get on the first thing that comes along, unless it's more expensive. In general, on transport, people will pay a premium for speed; _express_ bus routes can charge a premium. For instance going to the airport I can take the city bus system for 2 euro and take over an hour (I'm on the wrong side of the city) or an express service that takes 20 minutes but costs 8 euro. I take the express one, and so do enough other people that it stays in business. And they'll pay for better seating for _long_ journeys. But 'long' appears to mean "at least an hour" and possibly "at least two hours". (Semi-anecdotal evidence of this; in Ireland, a small country where most rail journeys not involving a transfer are <2 hours, first class _used_ to be a thing on trains, but it has been withdrawn from all services except Dublin-Belfast (2 hours) and Dublin-Cork (2.5 hours) because people simply weren't using it. You also see this with air travel; non-budget airlines have been cutting non-economy seating on short routes for years because it's hard to sell.)

by mg 2y ago

rsynnott 2y ago

> but I would expect buses that carry 20 passengers each FWIW, that's a _tiny_ bus. Typical city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150. At peak time on important routes they'll generally be mostly full. The major capacity limit on buses is stopping. On busy systems at peak times, you'll tend to get clumping at stops, as similar routes line up one after another.

mg 2y ago
city buses take 80-100 people, articulated buses about 150 Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. I have took an extensive look at this over the last weeks. A typical articulated bus can only carry about 20 to 30 passengers who are seated as comfortably as in a private car. Partly that is because of the design of the buses. If the buses were redesigned to comfortably seat people, they could probably carry an additional 10 or 20 passengers who are comfortably seated.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  > Yes, but then they are not offering a ride that is better than a ride in a private car. Oh, I missed that point. I mean, personally I'd say that any bus offers a better ride than driving a car, in that you do not have to _drive_ the thing, but tastes differ, of course. Ideally most urban bus routes would be short enough that healthy people can comfortably use them without sitting. Realistically, the costs of operating a bus are pretty fixed, and bus networks have hard space-based caps on capacity (as I mention elsewhere stops in particular are a problem), so the priority will always be on getting as many people in the space as possible. It's hard to see why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses; it would degrade the system as a whole, and the ticket price would be unreasonably high. Most people, also, will care more about "can I actually get on the bus for my 20 minute journey" than "if I get on, will I have a comfy seat", which tends to indicate a mostly-standing design with seating available for elderly and disabled people. As an example, take my local system. Dublin's main bus system has about 1,300 buses in operation; almost all of these are double-deckers with a capacity of 90-100 people. The system is pretty much limited by availability of drivers. Fares are 2 euro for a 90 minute journey (or where the last leg of the journey is started within 90 minutes of the first one). Adopting your system, we'd need five times as many buses, so for a start we'd need 6,500 buses, along with maybe 15,000 drivers and another 5,000 or so support staff. It's hard to see how that could happen without dramatically increasing the cost. But also, at peak times, major bus corridors are full of buses, and major bus stops have buses queueing up. It would simply not be reasonable to 5x this.
  - mg 2y ago
    why any public transport authority would do seating-only urban buses To get people to use the bus instead of a car. The average car costs €300/month. Plus about the same amount of opportunity costs, missed by having to control the steering wheel for about an hour per day. A public transport flatrate in Germany is only €59. Seems like there is a huge gap in the middle for a better bus experience. It would not degrade the system but wastly improve it. Because the buses would be additional buses. Each bus taking over 100 cars of the road. A bus can carry over 20 passengers and drive over 10 hours per day. While the average car ride carries 1.1 passengers or so and the car is only used 1 hour per day or so.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      Okay, so you're talking about an additional premium/first class bus service, rather than a change to the existing service? I suspect that that is doomed, because class-segregated intraurban transport _used to be a thing_ (albeit largely on metro and commuter train services, not buses), and it's died out virtually everywhere in the world; when offered the choice of paying X or 3X for the same journey with better seating, people just don't want to do that for short journeys. For instance the Paris Metro system used to have a first class carriage, until I think the late 80s. And this would actually be worse, because you'd be talking about separate, likely less frequent buses. Most people will just get on the first thing that comes along, unless it's more expensive. In general, on transport, people will pay a premium for speed; _express_ bus routes can charge a premium. For instance going to the airport I can take the city bus system for 2 euro and take over an hour (I'm on the wrong side of the city) or an express service that takes 20 minutes but costs 8 euro. I take the express one, and so do enough other people that it stays in business. And they'll pay for better seating for _long_ journeys. But 'long' appears to mean "at least an hour" and possibly "at least two hours". (Semi-anecdotal evidence of this; in Ireland, a small country where most rail journeys not involving a transfer are <2 hours, first class _used_ to be a thing on trains, but it has been withdrawn from all services except Dublin-Belfast (2 hours) and Dublin-Cork (2.5 hours) because people simply weren't using it. You also see this with air travel; non-budget airlines have been cutting non-economy seating on short routes for years because it's hard to sell.)