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> even a tiny city will need more than 100 buses to just provide bad service, and would need 5-10 times as many just to give good service Wikipedia says De Lij

> even a tiny city will need more than 100 buses to just provide bad service, and would need 5-10 times as many just to give good service Wikipedia says De Lijn (the company that provides public transport for Flanders) has 2200 busses total. Service could be better but it's not awful either, and that's for a whole region of 6 million inhabitants, so I think your numbers are quite off. A tiny city only requires a handful of busses, a medium one use 50 busses or so.

rsynnott 1y ago
I assume that the major urban areas also have decent rail and tram systems, though. It makes a big difference. Dublin has a metro population of about 1.5 million, and has about 1,400 buses (excluding intercity and private services); however its rail and tram systems are, er, inadequate. Berlin has about 1,600 buses for a metro area of 6 million, but of course has a far better rail and tram system.
- seszett 1y ago
  Right, I totally forgot that the bus network here is only there to fill the gaps between the tram lines, which might not be the case in other places.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Yeah, there's a route (or set of closely related routes) near my office which, at peak times, has a 100 person double decker bus about once per _minute_. Really, it should be a tram route, but that would require building a tram line, and Dublin tends to see that as an immense undertaking to be done only once a decade or so (and this decade's one is already planned out).
    - Scoundreller 1y ago
      Have they made any efforts to make peak demand... less peaky? That's kinda a problem with big capex transit projects: you're spending all this cash to 24/7 fix a problem that only exists for 5-10 hours/week.
      - vladvasiliu 1y ago
        This is what kills me where I live, too. I can’t understand why everyone insists on commuting exactly at the same time. Before WFH became a thing here, I just moved my office hours one hour earlier. I went from being sardine-packed to ample seating space. Bonus points for the buses and trains running faster, so my commute was not only orders of magnitude more comfortable, it was also much shorter ! Yes, I understand not everyone can do this, but the point is for people to be spread over a wider time range. Many people don’t have children to get to school and whatnot, a sizable chunk of them could probably move their hours a bit earlier or later.
f6v 1y ago
Just keep in mind that a company car is a major perk all salaried employees strive to get because that allows them to commute to work for free from all those tiny villages.

rsynnott 1y ago

I assume that the major urban areas also have decent rail and tram systems, though. It makes a big difference. Dublin has a metro population of about 1.5 million, and has about 1,400 buses (excluding intercity and private services); however its rail and tram systems are, er, inadequate. Berlin has about 1,600 buses for a metro area of 6 million, but of course has a far better rail and tram system.

seszett 1y ago
Right, I totally forgot that the bus network here is only there to fill the gaps between the tram lines, which might not be the case in other places.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Yeah, there's a route (or set of closely related routes) near my office which, at peak times, has a 100 person double decker bus about once per _minute_. Really, it should be a tram route, but that would require building a tram line, and Dublin tends to see that as an immense undertaking to be done only once a decade or so (and this decade's one is already planned out).
  - Scoundreller 1y ago
    Have they made any efforts to make peak demand... less peaky? That's kinda a problem with big capex transit projects: you're spending all this cash to 24/7 fix a problem that only exists for 5-10 hours/week.
    - vladvasiliu 1y ago
      This is what kills me where I live, too. I can’t understand why everyone insists on commuting exactly at the same time. Before WFH became a thing here, I just moved my office hours one hour earlier. I went from being sardine-packed to ample seating space. Bonus points for the buses and trains running faster, so my commute was not only orders of magnitude more comfortable, it was also much shorter ! Yes, I understand not everyone can do this, but the point is for people to be spread over a wider time range. Many people don’t have children to get to school and whatnot, a sizable chunk of them could probably move their hours a bit earlier or later.

f6v 1y ago

Just keep in mind that a company car is a major perk all salaried employees strive to get because that allows them to commute to work for free from all those tiny villages.