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A transit lane with excess capacity is a feature, not a bug. It provides slack to recover from issues.
by dcrazy 1y ago
A transit lane with excess capacity is a feature, not a bug. It provides slack to recover from issues.
- vkou 1y agoSlack is good, too much slack is wasteful. Charge them their full amortized share of the road, raise rates if congestion becomes a problem.
- lancewiggs 1y agoSure - if you do it by passengers and not by vehicle count. Busses are hilariously more efficient at moving people.
- vkou 1y agoPeople don't occupy space on roads, vehicles do. They should absolutely be paying by vehicle count. It's their problem if they can't fill the vehicles.
- dheera 1y agoThat works in cities like Zurich where there are lots of buses going absolutely everywhere and are almost always perfectly on time. I worked there for 3 months and my 8:23am city bus was there on the dot pretty much every day. It would often get to the stop at 8:21 and wait till 8:23, like clockwork. There was no payment system on the actual bus, people had to take care of payments outside the bus so as not to delay boarding. In the US, buses largely don't need to get you where you need to go, are never on time, delayed at every stop by a line of people fumbling for how to shove crumpled dollar bills into the machine. The governments have no plans to fix any of this, so I welcome the private sector to step in and provide a bus solution in the meantime that is fast, clean, and efficient.
- mmooss 1y agoThe Zurich story is interesting. The US story is just fantasy. Buses work well, few people use cash or coins, and government has been and is improving things - including payment. For example, I've seen plenty of public transit where people pay before the vehicle arrives.
- dcrazy 1y agoI have extensive experience with the bus systems in three major US cities and none of them are like that.
- FireBeyond 1y ago> delayed at every stop by a line of people fumbling for how to shove crumpled dollar bills into the machine In my US city, not a megalopolis, but a state capital, there's no machine to shove money into, because the bus system doesn't charge anyone to ride.