20 ms·

Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective

• estebank 8mo ago
  A lot of people arguing that these changes wouldn't bring benefits, or that the increased walk distance would crater ridership. I can provide some context from the SF 38 Geary[1] (often claimed to have the highest public transit ridership west of the Mississippi). Some time before COVID, there were 4 variants: 38, 38R which stops every three regular stops, and the 38AX and 38BX which would follow the outer route and then skip most of the stops in the middle(the former was explicitly meant to take commuters from the west side of SF to downtown). A dedicated bus line was added to Geary (with some resistance from some locals as in some areas it required removal of some parking spots[2]). I have experience with the first three variants before and after the dedicated bus lane. 38AX only ran a couple of times in the morning, always packed and would reliably take 30mins from 25th street (it's last stop before downtown) to Market street. Before the dedicated bus lane, the 38R would take about 40 to 45 minutes from 25th street to Market street, after the bus lane it now takes 30 minutes (making the 38AX redundant). Before the bus lane, the regular 38 would take about 50 minutes from 25th to Market. Google maps now says it takes about 40 minutes.[3] So a dedicated bus lane made as much of a difference as removing every stops in between, while stopping every three stops satill yields about 1/4th of time savings even with the dedicated bus lane (and none of these lines start at 25th, used that because it was the final stop before downtown for the 38AX, riders coming from the start in 48th would see additional savings). When looking at the ridership, the 38AX was always packed (as it came only a handful of times in the morning no one wanted to miss the last one and then have to take the 38R instead losing 10/15 minutes in their commute), the 38R is consistently more used than the 38. Right now the 38R comes every 6 minutes and the 38 every 15, so whether the ridership is impacted by travel time or frequency, I can't say. At night, only the 38 runs. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Geary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Geary [2]: https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/15/despite-protests-sfs-geary-boulevard-will-get-more-bus-lanes/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/08/15/despite-protests-sfs-geary... [3]: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.7799217,-122.4846478/37.7869493,-122.4041674/@37.7797567,-122.4651712,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!4m4!1m1!4e1!1m0!3e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDIyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.7799217,-122.4846478/37.7...
• lysace 8mo ago
  People here seem really afraid of walking for 2 minutes.
• Bluecobra 8mo ago
  I'm for all for less bus stops, but how do you make it equitable for people who can't walk longer distances if they are disabled or have an underlying health condition? Run a separate paratransit line?
  • unyttigfjelltol 8mo ago
    The answer is to keep the same number of stops but run two or more vehicles simultaneously. Or open more doors. Or expedite fares. The authors get mixed up equating count of marked stops with dwell time. Running leapfrogging vehicles , or numerous other strategies, reduces dwell time because one boards passengers and the other disembarks at any given stop or vice versa. In fact, I’d argue bus fare gates, steps, 1-door loading and traffic signal/stop interactions are far more significant than stop count.
    • dyauspitr 8mo ago
      > The answer is to keep the same number of stops but run two or more vehicles simultaneously. How exactly does that help? If you’re suggesting every bus go to alternate stops leapfrogging each one in the middle then that will cause a lot of confusion especially for tourist heavy cities.
      • VLM 8mo ago
        In 2022 according to the transit system annual report, the suburban quarter million person city I live in has ten routes and operates about 12 hours per day and per the annual report average weekday service consumed is 1556 UPT, so 1556 people step aboard the system and toss coins in the fare jar or pay with the app. UPT means they're not tracking transfers and essentially 100% of trips require a transfer so the real number of people served daily is closer to 775 than to 1550, but we'll run the optimistic numbers. Each of the ten hourly routes is about 4 miles long. So the overall system drives 12 hours * 10 routes * 4 miles * 5280 feet/mile = 2.5 million feet per day and divide that by 1556 passengers per day that's a pax every 1628 feet driven on an average day. So if we had a bus stop every 800 feet, on average half the stops would be empty and passed by. If that high level of use is causing too much congestion and slow down at stops, if we had two buses running out of phase, pax arrive at the same rate, so we'd pick up a pax every 3000+ feet driven. So if we had bus stops every 500 feet to keep people happy, on average the bus would drive right by about 5 out of 6 empty stops, which seems reasonable and would not result in unusual delays or congestion. Also the bus would pass by every half hour not every hour, which would probably increase ridership a lot. So if the only labor expense were the $23/hr driver, and we pay 10 drivers on 10 routes, to drive twelve times, thats $23/hr * 10 routes * 12 hours if everything except driver labor were free that means we spend $2760 per day to transport 1556 people, or about $1.77 per trip (assuming diesel is free, buses never wear out, etc). If we doubled the number of bus that would be $5520 of driver labor to move 1556 people per day or $3.55 cost per pax trip. On one hand the actual annual total "OE per UPT" counting weekends and maint and office people and dispatchers etc, according to the annual report is $13.94, so an extra $1.77 would seem cheap, but the bus does not run for free and the total expense of doubling the runs might cost as much as an extra $14 per pax trip. The costs don't really matter, if the taxpayers want it as a luxury bragging feature of the city. Everyone wants everyone else to use it even though no one would be caught dead actually using it. My point being that adult fare is $2 but adults don't ride its mostly elderly and disabled at the $1 fare, so a profit (loss) ratio of (28 - 1)/28 with two buses per route isn't much worse than (14 - 1)/14 with one bus per route. Maybe another way to look at the analysis is in my city if the stops are more than 1600 feet apart there will be multiple people per stop and that would "slow things down" whereas a small fraction like 400 feet would mean the bus mostly just speeds by. No one can seem to explain why we can't have infinite bus stops. How about every stop sign is a bus stop? The bus has to stop anyway. Artificial scarcity to drive down ridership, I suppose.
• moralestapia 8mo ago
  Very detailed analysis. I agree with the claim that "fewer stops, faster service" on the surface. However we'd have to see if that's truly the case, as cities have red lights and traffic, so the bus stops anyway ... I believe, taking this into account, the difference might not be that significant.
  • kshacker 8mo ago
    Imagine stopping at the bus stop and then immediately stopping at red light
    • IAmBroom 8mo ago
      I'm guessing you don't live in a city. They plan bus stops at lights, so that doesn't really happen - just sometimes there's an extra-long bus pause for mount/dismount.
      • kshacker 8mo ago
        Yes I am not a bus passenger. I have used buses in some US cities over a decade back, and from those rare trips my memories are not aligned with yours. Alright ...
  • mschuster91 8mo ago
    > However we'd have to see if that's truly the case, as cities have red lights and traffic, so the bus stops anyway. Two problems - for one, riders entering and exiting takes time, especially if the public transit scheme says you can only enter at the front and have to show/buy tickets at the driver, and the other problem is that in most areas, buses cannot request a green light, so with a loop time of 1-2 minutes (quite common in German cities on busy roads) you may easily lose 2-3 minutes in the worst case just from a mismatch of departure with the light being green. And over the course of a few stops, that lost time can add up quickly.
  • piinbinary 8mo ago
    That's an interesting point. I'm also curious how bus stops interact with timed lights. Presumably each time the bus stops, it gets kicked back to the next cycle of green lights (which might be a low-single-digit minute delay). Hopefully there's a traffic engineer in the audience who can give the real answers.
• renewiltord 8mo ago
  The United States needs a regulatory innovation that allows broad benefit actions that nonetheless have specific losers.
  • treetalker 8mo ago
    I propose inordinate taxes on corporations and very wealthy individuals.
    • renewiltord 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      • philipallstar 8mo ago
        It's crazy to tax unrealised gains. You pay tax based on money you don't have, just a bureaucrat's decision as to how much your portfolio went up.
        • renewiltord 8mo ago
          Yeah, I think so too. But if we’re going to tax them I think setting the limit to 5x median American wealth is fine. That way it impacts a broad enough base that it’s not two wolves and a sheep sitting down to dinner.
          • hypeatei 8mo ago
            That's arbitrary and would still cause issues. You'd cause a mass liquidation event and discourage investing or create a bunch of winners in the tax accounting industry. Unrealized capital gains tax is very unserious and IMO just populist drivel.
            • triceratops 8mo ago
              > You'd cause a mass liquidation event What if the tax could be paid with assets instead of currency? And the assets went into some kind of sovereign wealth fund?
• pavel_lishin 8mo ago
  > Bus stop balancing saves riders’ time. Riders save between 12 and 24 seconds per stop removed. I wonder if this savings includes the additional time to walk further to a stop. Especially in light of this quote: > In England, where 28 percent of all bus passengers are on concessionary fares for age or disability
  • macintux 8mo ago
    I doubt they’d be able to measure that with any accuracy.
    • johannes1234321 8mo ago
      The wonders of statistics! One can calculate how much area and thus passengers the stop covers and calculate walking times. It's not completely trivial (with longer distance people chose alternatives), but can be done similar to the way the whole study was done with similar accuracy.
  • bluGill 8mo ago
    It depends on how long you are on the bus. It cost a few minutes, but a couple miles on the but makes up for the lost time. So for short trips where healty people should walk or bike it slows things down but for longer trips it is faster.
    • JackFr 8mo ago
      Both NYC and London have express buses that skip stops.
      • bluGill 8mo ago
        That is a good option if the density supports it with good service
  • indymike 8mo ago
    By doubling the walk, increasing the trip time for riders by 5 minutes and potentially making bus untenable in bad weather.
• aiauthoritydev 8mo ago
  United states does not need buses ! What might benefit is smaller vans that do more intelligent routing than fixed bus routes. Unfortunately city admins run bus services as jobs programs for adults and not for the convenience of the people. Buses get funded by taxes and not fare collection and as a result even private competition can not emerge.
  • pavel_lishin 8mo ago
    > and as a result even private competition can not emerge. Demonstrably untrue, if you were to look at taxis, ubers, lyfts, and ... small vans that operate exactly as you describe, in many large cities. (In NYC, I know there exists such a van network in Brooklyn, and near the George Washington Bridge running across the river.) And besides, buses have advantages that "intelligent routing"-based vans - predictability and reliability. If I need to get somewhere by bus, I know exactly which stop I need to go to, and usually when the bus is scheduled to arrive to pick me up, and also to drop me off. (Granted, sometimes those times aren't right, but they usually are, most of the time.)
    • nine_k 8mo ago
      Confirmed: the van network in Brooklyn exists, a ride still costs $2 (compared to $3 on an MTA bus), the vans / minibuses largely follow popular bus routes, and stop basically anywhere along the route where it is safe, including on a red light.
    • mothballed 8mo ago
      I've ridden collectivo type vans in a number of latin america countries (Philippines has same although sometimes in form of jeepnee), they work quite well, you shout 'para' or some such where you need to stop and wave boldly when you need to get on. Much prefer it to a bus, and also since they are privately owned it is very easy to kick assholes off which is one of my biggest gripes with dealing with public transit.
  • jghn 8mo ago
    Tell me you don't live in a real city without telling me you don't live in a real city. Where I live the busses are quite useful and get used by a lot of people.
• forthwall 8mo ago
  I always bemoan the extra stops when I'm on the bus but I love always being near a bus stop; I do think the limited/skip stop bus idea is good though, as long as theres ones that alternate, though I do also like frequency, so hopefully service remains the same. I think though, more frequency beats speed though
  • jghn 8mo ago
    As always, it's a careful balance. And specific to every bus route/stop combination, not to mention it can change over time. Routes should always be evaluated based on ridership data, where people are getting on & off, how long each stop actually delays the overall journey, and more.
• benleejamin 8mo ago
  (Anecdotally) reliability is a huge factor for me — living in NYC, there are a few neighborhoods that would be much easier to reach by bus, but arrival times can vary by more than the length of the entire trip. Easier to just take a subway, even if it means an extra ten minutes of walking on each end.
• boplicity 8mo ago
  Give buses signal priority and their own lanes. This would dramatically speed up bus service. However, nobody wants to slow down cars, hence buses will always be a worse option.
  • sensanaty 8mo ago
    This is how it works in NL, separate lanes with separate signals that may be used only by buses (and other public transportation, including taxis). Works great!
  • danhor 8mo ago
    Signal Priority only works well if the arrival time of the bus can be predicted some time before arrival at the signal (~30 seconds is a number I've heard a few times). As bus stopping times are highly unpredictable, a lower number of bus stops makes signal priority work much better (and far-side bus stops). Furthermore signal priority and own lanes are almost always beaten by good circulation planning, reducing the number of traffic lights and cars on the route of the bus.
• petcat 8mo ago
  > increasing the distance between stops from 700–800 feet [...] to 1,300 feet I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership. This feels like it's optimizing for the wrong thing. Also, the example given cites New York City buses. But New York City is always the worst example because it's the most extreme of everything. The vast majority of US cities do not suffer from crawling buses. Maybe this should say New York City needs fewer bus stops? I'd like to see you try.
  • bpodgursky 8mo ago
    I don't wanna be rude but when someone spends months researching an issue, which systems work and which don't, you should probably give some level of grace and understand how they came to those numbers rather than spit out your first mindless critique.
    • petcat 8mo ago
      I ride the bus and I can tell you right now that I would be pissed if this guy took away my bus stop. That's my critique. I think it's perfectly valid.
      • bluGill 8mo ago
        Only because you know your loss but cannot imagine your gains in time.
        • petcat 8mo ago
          The gains just mean that I sit on the bus while twice as many people are trying to board at every stop. The bus is stopped for twice as long.
          • pkulak 8mo ago
            I've watched 30 kids get off at their school in the morning. It takes 15 seconds. By your logic, 30 stops adds 15 seconds to a bus's schedule, which is pants-on-head crazy.
• heyitsmedotjayb 8mo ago
  I think this kind of thing is a bigger problem than people realize. I take a regional commuter bus to and from my local international airport when I fly. The huge bus has to slowly and carefully enter my local universities 'bus loop', making several tight turns through traffic lights to get to the bus stop, and then make the journey out again. It takes 10-15 minutes in traffic to move the bus ~200feet from the boulevard to the bus stop and back to the boulevard again.
  • skywhopper 8mo ago
    This sounds more like that the stop is just very poorly designed than that there need to be fewer stops.
    • heyitsmedotjayb 8mo ago
      I mean yes. But it has more to do with the design and attitude of bus route planning than whether or not a single stop is mis-designed, or whether there are too many stops overall. A rail line wouldn't have this problem because its clearly ridiculous and impossible to route tracks into a tight loop - the built environment in that case would accommodate the limitations of the rail, and the station would be built 200 feet away from the door. Since busses have the freedom to loop around mindlessly, the built environment refuses to accommodate them.
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  • francisofascii 8mo ago
    Yep, this is a good example of the stops that really slow down bus routes. You have situations where you have to make a stop, like for a big university, but it's not feasible to simply drop people off on the side of a busy/high speed road.
• piinbinary 8mo ago
  Back when I lived in SF, there was one bus route (the 6, I believe) that I could use to get to work. The bus was so slow due to frequent, long stops and traffic lights that I could keep up with it on foot by walking briskly. I only bothered taking it when it was raining because it didn't get me to work any faster than walking.
• farceSpherule 8mo ago
  [dead]
• miltonlost 8mo ago
  As someone who rides the bus: it's payment that causes slowdowns. Waiting for everyone to get on the front of the bus and tap often takes multiple traffic cycles. If we wanted to treat public transit as a true public good (as it ought to be), it should be funded from taxes and free at point of service, and then front and back can be used. But that'd be too much efficiency and cost the rich too much. This article feels like he's picking the one lever he can when it's a bad lever. He created a new kind of ethical trolley problem by making it less accessible vs more efficient
  • bluGill 8mo ago
    There are a lot of other ways to speed up payment. they are better as well imho
  • johannes1234321 8mo ago
    That's the argument Mamdani makes to argue to make busses free. Taking the payment away would produce a lot more of reliability. Over here in my European town this isn't an issue as we have a "trust based system" where tickets are only checked infrequently by spot inspections on the running bus and most people have a monthly pass. So it's just hop on and off.
  • mmooss 8mo ago
    That is an accepted issue among bus planners. One solution, I think used at least in part of NYC is to pay at the bus stop, before you board. Related is enforcing boarding and paying in front and leaving via the back door, so the leavers don't delay the boarders.
    • estebank 8mo ago
      > enforcing boarding and paying in front and leaving via the back door, so the leavers don't delay the boarders. In my experience, being able to pay at any of the doors increases throughput because people are not bunched up in a single door, neither to get on or off, Parallelizing (and load balancing!) the movement of people. Not having to tap to pay (either because it is free, because monthly passes don't require it or because you can pre-pay at a machine or online) would have some additional time gains at rush hour on popular lines.
• paxys 8mo ago
  The only stops needed are the ones outside my house and outside my office.
• knuckleheads 8mo ago
  >Many of the solutions to these problems require money – running more buses, improving stop amenities, or upgrading signals – or the political will to take away street space for busways and transit lanes. But stop balancing can have a meaningful impact on these issues for a fraction of the price. To me, this exemplifies a type of thinking that is endemic to policymakers in the US. We can tinker at the edges, we can use computers to optimize what we have, but the idea of using money and political will to change anything at all in a meaningful way is anathema, beyond the pale. Giving up before even getting started. Sure, optimize away, but don't expect me to be inspired by pushing papers around.
  • paxys 8mo ago
    A large chunk of problems faced by regular Americans can be solved by money equivalent to a rounding error compared to how much we spend on military, private health subsidies, interest payments, corporate benefits. Yet the "who will pay for it??" narrative never comes up when talking about any of these, only school lunches and buses.
  • InitialLastName 8mo ago
    That level of risk aversion has been burned into policymakers, especially at the local level. Wasting taxpayer money by letting an inefficient system continue to degrade makes less news than doing so by investing in a risk that failed, and gets a lot fewer people screaming at you in public and sending you death threats.
    • knuckleheads 8mo ago
      Yes! "We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas" is not inspiring! Mamdani threw cash at the problem of snow on the streets and now, huh, suddenly there's not so much snow on the streets of NYC compared to previous blizzards, who would have thought.
      • nobrains 8mo ago
        The issue is that all money-throwing needs to be balanced by careful thought. This cycle the money-throwing at snow plowing worked. Next cycle, it will not be as effective, as more people who want to "game" the rewards will enter the equation. So every cycle, along with money, some thought will need to go into improving the system or coming up with alternate solutions.
• skywhopper 8mo ago
  This seems way too tightly focused on this one issue. If it were the case that longer distances between stops alone would result in increased ridership, then Las Vegas ought to have better ridership than most European cities by this article’s stats. Does it? Well, those stats aren’t mentioned in the article, but I’d be surprised, given that for the US cities for which I am familiar with their bus service, the average distance between stops is actually inversely correlated with the quality of the service. Hmmm. I’m sure bus stop distance optimization is a good thing to do at the margins, but this article is not convincing that it’s the biggest problem with US bus service.
  • michaelmrose 8mo ago
    It's arguments is that all the better things are impossible to do without political will and money and therefore we should implement their bad idea. Bus stops at the margins are actually cheapest because it often consists of a pole which is skipped 90% of the time. At the margin you already have fewer stops further apart and there is basically nothing to trim. If nobody is at the stop 90% of the time does it mean we don't need it? No. Your riders in that area may largely not be commuters and grandma needs to get out of the house and go to the store periodically. You are paying near zero for 10 stops over 5 miles so that each run the bus can stop at a different 2 at a cost of 30 seconds per run.
• varispeed 8mo ago
  The dilemma. Bus takes me about the same time where I want to go if I was just walking, assuming the bus spawns at the bus stop as soon as I get there. Last time I had to take a bus from place of work to home and took about 3 hours. Most of the time sitting in traffic and bus stops. I made the same journey with a cab in less than an hour. I think bus in busy town is only useful if you have mobility issues, carry a lot of shopping and have no funds for other means of transport. In my city also buses are typically occupied by feral youth, covered in dirt and smell of weed. You have to always check if the seat doesn't have fresh bubble gum on it or worse. Joys of London.
• giantfrog 8mo ago
  Libertarian publication run by the wealthy suggests course of action that will disproportionately harm the poor, I’m shocked!
  • postflopclarity 8mo ago
    I don't think you read or understood the article if this is your takeaway.
• JBorrow 8mo ago
  At some level this is driven by street design. The reason bus stops are so close in Philadelphia is because they stop every block, and there's a stop sign every block. The blocks are very small. I don't know that 'removing' these as bus-stops would actually change anything. I think a larger question is whether route changes should occur. There was a large effort in Philly called the 'Bus Revolution' [1] that aimed to re-balance routes (I have a map from the 50s on my wall and the bus routes are the same, including numbers, as they are today). The problem there was that there was a funding crisis that massively delayed the implementation [2]. These services are massively under-funded, and that's the primary issue; implementing the article's suggestions are not free. [1] https://wwww.septa.org/initiatives/bus/ https://wwww.septa.org/initiatives/bus/ [2] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/transportation-and-transit/transit-death-spiral-puts-septas-bus-revolution-on-hold/4028645/ https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/transportation-and-tran...
  • steanne 8mo ago
    we'll see how cutting stops works out: that's part of what they're planning to rework the trolleys. https://wwww.septa.org/trolley-modernization/ https://wwww.septa.org/trolley-modernization/
  • nickorlow 8mo ago
    Removing the stops helps a lot. As an example on SEPTA, the 124/125 [1][2] to Wissahickon T.C. takes 10+ minutes longer than taking the 27 [3] when starting at J.F.K. & 15th. (for context: the 124/5 operate locally west through center city before getting on the highway while the 27 only makes 1-2 more stops in center city before getting on the highway) Making these extra stops causes the bus to 'miss' the light cycle at almost every stop. [1] https://www.septa.org/schedules/124?startStop=17842&endStop=32989&directionId=0&date=2026-02-25 https://www.septa.org/schedules/124?startStop=17842&endStop=... [2] https://www.septa.org/schedules/125?startStop=17842&endStop=32989&directionId=0&date=2026-02-25 https://www.septa.org/schedules/125?startStop=17842&endStop=... [3] https://www.septa.org/schedules/27?startStop=17842&endStop=32991&directionId=1&date=2026-02-25 https://www.septa.org/schedules/27?startStop=17842&endStop=3...
    • 8mo ago
• mmooss 8mo ago
  It ignores the problem of people with difficulty walking, for whom 400 yards is a serious burden, and significantly limits their access to buses. And then think about bad weather, slippery ground, etc. Many of these people have no other options: If you are elderly or physically limited when you are younger, there's a good chance that wealth is limited, rideshares and taxis are not an option, and if you can't take public transit, you are stuck at home. Don't think about it as 'today I can't take the bus'. Think about it as, 'for the most part, I can't leave my home/block anymore'.
• paxys 8mo ago
  Something the article completely skips over is that European cities have significantly better and safer pedestrian infrastructure than their US counterparts. American streets are built to prioritize cars and cars alone. Sidewalks are often unmaintained, bumpy, and sometimes missing altogether. Crossings are often unmarked and dangerous. Stop signs and signals are routinely ignored, especially when turning. This is why in countries like Germany pedestrian deaths per mile walked is 8 times lower than the USA (and these numbers continue to move in opposite directions year after year). Unless you can address this fundamental problem "just walk more" isn't a viable option for transit users.
  • burnt-resistor 8mo ago
    Yep. Just one thoughtless example: Austin TX downtown is actively hazardous to non-motor vehicle users. One example is worn down and effectively camouflaged pucks the same color as the roadway about 10 cm wide by 6 cm high sticking out the middle of the road randomly that once represented bike lane merge path markers. Ask me how I know. :/
  • closetohome 8mo ago
    Similarly, the article also glosses over the issue of disability. Perhaps because the US tends to treat its bus system as welfare, it is adapted heavily to people with disabilities and limited mobility. I'm sure there are solutions to this, but at the moment removing bus stops tends to disenfranchise people who can't walk longer distances.
    • bgnn 8mo ago
      This is true for everywhere tbh, and thr solution is to make the last mile walkable by people with disabilities. I see a lot of idolization of NW Europe from the US, but this is still a problem in Europe too. True, it's better than most of the world, but not every NW European city is as walkable or as accessible as people think it is.
    • TulliusCicero 8mo ago
      > but at the moment removing bus stops tends to disenfranchise people who can't walk longer distances. So those categories of people just can't use public transit in places where public transit is more popular?
• taeric 8mo ago
  Read differently, the United States needs more of a forcing function to get people to take the bus and less focus on convenience. You can maybe frame it as this story does that it is the time cost of the stops. This somewhat completely ignores the extra time people would have to walk between the stops, though? It also completely ignores that Atlanta's metro does target about this distance for bus stops? Which would be a compelling argument against it driving adoption, to be honest.
• mcv 8mo ago
  Some areas around Amsterdam have a two-tier bus system, with regular buses with regularly spaced stops, and a network of fast long-distance buses with far less stops and dedicated lanes over their entire trip. They have proven to be incredibly reliable; during the occasional day of terrible weather when trains leave people stranded, these buses still manage to get everybody home in a reasonable time.
• guerrilla 8mo ago
  This sounds exactly like one of those birds-eye technocratic moves which inevitably destroys the system it tries to fix because of a failure to properly understand it, which nobody really can since it grew organically for actual reasons. Classic nerd overconfidence.
• salt-thrower 8mo ago
  This resonates with me. I used to live in a medium-sized US city which prided itself on its public transit. The buses were SO slow, and it's because they would sometimes literally stop every two blocks on a major through street. (This particular city has the smallest "block size" in the US, so it was extra ridiculous). It was infuriating. I would gladly walk twice as far to find the first stop if it meant the bus stopped half as much once I'm on it. Bringing up accessibility concerns for people who can't walk as far is well-meant, but seems contrived. There's no guarantee that accessible housing is available near the existing stops anyway, and with the cost savings from having fewer stops (and windfall from increased ridership due to the bus becoming a faster option), bus lines could even be expanded, allowing more people to live near a bus line in general. Perhaps it would balance out? Many transit services also offer smaller shuttles that can go directly to the homes of people with disabilities, so putting that responsibility on buses alone seems ineffective. I think the author is on to something here.
• jonbaer 8mo ago
  We need smarter dynamic fares, it shouldn't be a $6 flat tax on all destinations. I think this hurts local businesses, or all local (non business) residents should automatically get half fare.
  • michaelmrose 8mo ago
    Since it is already mostly paid for by taxes why not just make it free.
    • jonbaer 8mo ago
      Didn't realize some cities had voted it in post-COVID, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
  • rsynnott 8mo ago
    The opposite actually tends to increase ridership; complex fare systems put people off and tend to make getting on the bus more time consuming (may require each passenger to interact with the driver).
• ulrashida 8mo ago
  So, given that Phoenix, Denver, and Vegas already have spacing similar to European nations do they see the benefits that the author is suggesting?
  • JackFr 8mo ago
    Phoenix metro has 5mm people and does 37mm bus rides. NYC has 8.5mm people and does 400+mm bus rides. London has 9mm and does 1.8 billion bus rides. But those 37mm in Phoenix are probably going faster than 8mph.
• helle253 8mo ago
  I live on the north side of Chicago and, to be honest, one of my favorite modes of public transit is the express buses that go from Edgewater/Uptown to downtown. It's MUCH faster than the train, because once it hits the highway, it doesn't stop till it gets downtown. Dont get me wrong I love the train, but the red line suffers from the same too-many-stops problem. Express buses thread the needle imo precisely because they hook into existing infrastructure (highways) and still move masses of people
  • michaelmrose 8mo ago
    Good point but the solution you are describing is having a tiny minority of busses that move quickly between centers of activity faster rather than decreasing the stops on the vast majority of the line.
• hibikir 8mo ago
  It's probably right, but it's not going to be a panacea: Outside of very few areas in US cities, a key limitation to bus ridership is few trips generated by the catchment areas: How many people would conceivably be served by each stop? If you look at a high resolution density map of the world, you'll find great public transport in places that have at least 70K people in the square km around stops. At that density, you can often support subways profitably too. Then a mesh of subways and buses will get you to places quite efficiently. But then you look in the US, and the vast majority of our large metros have very few areas reaching those densities (Manhattan excluded). So you end up in situations where a bus or a light rail can neither be efficient nor cheap, no matter what you do with the bus stops. There's just not enough things near each stop, and even when they are close, it might not be even all that safe to cross the streets to reach your destination. So while this might be a good optimization for places where we are close to good systems, I suspect that ultimately most cities need far more expensive changes to even consider having good transit
• avazhi 8mo ago
  People don’t use public transport for many reasons other than this, personal safety and comfort being two big ones that no amount of optimisation can fix. I’d rather get to work half as quickly if it means I don’t have to listen to a druggie issue schizophrenic violent threats towards random women throughout my journey (occurred just last week on a tram in Melbourne). Other cities I’ve been to and used public transport in (NYC, Portland, San Francisco, Dallas, Sydney) have been just as awful. All these public policy wonks really do seem to forget that most of us want to get as far away as possible from the psychos that seem to make up an increasing share of society, time and cost be damned.
  • wat10000 8mo ago
    Increased ridership can help a lot with that. People typically behave better when there's a large audience.
    • phendrenad2 8mo ago
      This cuts out certain types of crime, but doesn't do anything about the people having psychotic episodes, or robberies, and with enough people, you get the added crime of groping. What can help a lot is more enforcement, but in the current climate, where all police are seen as Nazi-adjacent, I don't think that's going to fly.
• michaelmrose 8mo ago
  > lacking basic amenities like shelters, benches, or real-time arrival information. Uneven and cracked sidewalks and a lack of shelter or seating present a particular challenge for elderly and disabled riders. Most stops should in fact be a pole where the bus stops frequently enough that you don't care about other amenities. Furthermore it is deeply ironic that it suggests that we invest in fewer stops further away with more niceties for the elderly and disabled whilst suggesting they walk further because these folks often have more trouble getting up and down and walking longer distances than they do standing 3 minutes until the next bus. May I also suggest that any study that compares prospective travel times before and after stop balancing especially if it be especially aggressive consider whether the actual decrease in time is just not having to stop because ridership actually decreased. See > San Francisco saw a 4.4 to 14 percent increase in travel speeds (depending on the trip) by decreasing spacing from six stops per mile to two and a half. If you had to walk half a mile on each end of your bus ride and possibly some more when you change busses you might reconsider the utility of public transit. Whereas routes are often going to deliberately intersect to facility changing busses efficiently and this is trivial in small suburban areas in cities with a tangle of routes I've often found many practical routes suggested by google maps to involve getting off at a random midpoint of a route and crossing the street and getting on another even when traveling to fairly central locations. These fortuitous connections would certainly be decreased if stops were aggressively trimmed. I also question that virtue of real time arrival information which is very expensive per installation and trivially delivered to the phone in everyone's pocket anywhere and everywhere for almost nothing if you are already collecting positioning info on the busses. I use one bus away for this. Put a QR code on the stop on the pole. > Many of the solutions to these problems require money – running more buses, improving stop amenities, or upgrading signals – or the political will to take away street space for busways and transit lanes. The solution is to do the things that are actually required. Not one weird trick to fix the bus system.
• Wistar 8mo ago
  Although long ago now, When I moved from Denmark to Seattle and tried to use the bus, it was immediately apparent that there’s at least double, maybe triple, the number of stops in Seattle’s Metro as there are in the same distance in Copenhagen. At the time I remember thinking that the average Seattle trip would be SO much faster if the number of stops were dramatically reduced.
  • vkou 8mo ago
    The average Seattle trip would be so much faster if bus coverage and frequency were increased, and they got dedicated travel lanes. The reason 'Race the 8' is an event isn't because there are too many bus stops on Denny, it's because all the cars cause traffic to slow to a crawl for 6 hours of the day.
    • Wistar 8mo ago
      My observation at the time was mostly in Magnolia to the Belltown area and the place I thought had way too many stops was in the Magnolia neighborhood, almost per block and it seemed a terrible waste. Plus the buses themselves seemed to resent being stopped and started so much—they rattled and groaned and squeaked.
  • jcgl 8mo ago
    Seattle bus routes are really horrible. Not only is there the high number of stops, but the whole city's transit infrastructure is North-South aligned; moving East-West is a massive pain across much of the city and adds incredible time and hassle.
• mattgrice 8mo ago
  Founding editor of this magazine works for Mercatus Center which is a F.A. Hayek fan club. You know, the Pinochet guy. You already know what the conclusion is going to be, the interesting part is how the author gets there.
• xnx 8mo ago
  Counterpoint: The US needs infinite bus stops served by self-driving "buses". The fixed-route mode of transit planning became a dinosaur with the advent of the smart phone.
• dkuntz2 8mo ago
  Wrong.
• kelvinjps10 8mo ago
  Checking how long would it be for me to get to work in Google maps Car 25min Bus 1h.50min It's so crazy the difference, in other countries it only doubles but in the us is 4x the time.
• lavelganzu 8mo ago
  Meanwhile here in central Austin, it's a 0.9 mile walk from my door to the nearest bus stop that I can use to commute, walking along major stroads some of which don't even have sidewalks, much of the year in Texan heat with no scrap of shade. Then it's up to a 30 minute wait for the delayed or canceled bus, then almost exactly a 1-hour ride on the express 801 to go 7 miles to work downtown. Somehow we combine inaccessibly rare bus stops with speed barely over walking. The solution, I imagine, requires many changes that are politically infeasible. First, double the number of buses to reduce the wait between them. Second, add neighborhood circulator buses to get people from the neighborhoods to the express buses. Third, either add dedicated bus lanes in congested areas or, in an ideal world, make all congested inner-city roads toll roads, and use the tolls to subsidize buses.
  • cloverich 8mo ago
    But if you live near Lamar its pretty great. I use to alternate bus and light rail despite owning a car because it was very convenient, despite always being the slower option. But that does also reinforce the point. Even at max convenience, with two good options (rail, rapid bus line), it was still about 15% slower than driving. Add a single connection or your situation and you're losing an hour a day round trip.
• janalsncm 8mo ago
  I believe the central thesis of this article is unsupported, and other assertions are false. One, the article asserts that too many stops is the main cause of low ridership in the US. I didn’t even see a correlation (which would still not prove one causes the other) between number of stops and ridership. This is the central thesis of the article. Two, removing stops will likely not make the remaining stops nicer. Cities aren’t thinking about how to allocate a fixed bus budget. They’re asking themselves how much they have to spend on buses. This is the core of the problem: low cost services are in a death spiral in the US. Budget cuts -> services get worse -> reduced users -> more cuts. In my experience, the bus is not a nice experience. The bus feels dirty, unsafe and hostile. Further, the arrival times are not reliable and are often a long time apart. This means you need to arrive ~10 minutes early and time your bus so that you also arrive at your destination early. You will be wasting possibly 20+ minutes each way. Of course you are also standing in the sun or the cold or the rain while you wait, and probably walking on a hostile stroad and across several lanes of traffic before that point. So while the number of bus stops might matter at the margins, we’re not talking about a system where marginal improvements will matter. If you want to improve ridership, you need to make the bus an attractive option for more people.
  • the_sleaze_ 8mo ago
    Why have bus stops at all, waymo should build a transit bus or large van and run them autonomously. Then they could optimize the fleet as they please. Bus stops were a solution to a lack of connectivity and demand.
    • culi 8mo ago
      Those busses still need designated spots to stop at. They can't be stopping in the middle of a street
      • krab 8mo ago
        Taxis/Ubers/... can and do stop in the middle of a street. Why would that be different for a bus picking up a single person?
• nickorlow 8mo ago
  This is very true (that re-balancing will help ridership/operations), but politically it's hard to do. Everyone wants better buses, but nobody wants to lose the stop right next to their house/apartment (even if the nearest stop is only a block or two away). Unfortunately, the naysayers usually get their way as changing the status quo like this is hard to do. Transit Authorities need to be given more leeway to operate how they want w/ less political involvement. Countries that are less NIMBY/lawsuit/etc happy have vastly better public transit b/c of this. Philadelphia City Council (which actually doesn't have any direct oversight of SEPTA) pretty much killed SEPTA's attempt at this.
• munificent 8mo ago
  Any article about public transit in the US needs to discuss the opioid epidemic and mental health crisis. Otherwise, it's like claiming that bicycles work great for the Netherlands, so people should ride them in the Himalayas. The situation is just so different in many cities in the US compared to Europe in ways that drastically affect public transit. > By contrast, a bus stop in a French city like Marseille will have shelters and seating by default. The bus stop I use regularly has seating and shelter. That's great because I currently have severe post-traumatic osteoarthritis in my ankle and it's painful to stand for several minutes while I wait for a bus. One day, a homeless guy was sitting on the bench when I got there. A few minutes later, he stood up, walked to the bushes, pulled down his pants, squatted, and unleashed a liquified horror from his ass. He pulled his pants up, and sat back down on the bench. I don't sit on that bench anymore. Nearly everyone I know who rides the bus has a story of being harassed by a mentally ill person. Most women I know either refuse to take the bus, or only take it in very careful situations where the odds of being accosted are lower. We can't have nice things as a public without figuring out a way to help the people in crisis who end up making it worse for everyone.
• mobilene 8mo ago
  When I rode the city bus as a teen in South Bend, IN, in the 80s, there were some designated bus stops. But buses worked on a hail model anyway. You could be on any corner on the route, and as the bus approached, you'd just stick up your arm and it would stop. It was really efficient. But I suppose that works best in a small city like South Bend.
• kaitai 8mo ago
  The article says, "This pattern, of only those without good alternative options riding the bus, is especially pronounced in the US. But close stop spacing creates problems." But it does not address the point. The bus in the US is aimed at poor, elderly, and disabled people. Elderly and disabled people want stops closer to their homes, especially given the low overall density of bus lines. The US has a lot of competing problems, and underinvestment in poor people and health support is one that collides with public transit. One thing I've realized in the US is that because of our inequality, people strive hard to earn and buy their way out of misery in a way that is not necessary in large parts of Europe. So in the US we work very hard to earn money to pay for big cars to drive through the suburbs so that we don't have to see homeless people sleeping on the bus when it's cold, and once we've invested in our suburban cars & houses we have personal assets we need to defend (at the expense of communal infrastructure in some cases). I take the bus regularly in my city, often with a child. janalsncm has legit criticisms of many US public bus systems. I take the bus with the kid so I can avoid driving/parking and go to a few spots that are convenient unencumbered by a vehicle. We tend to take a rapid line that has fewer stops -- and the speed makes it convenient. So the article isn't all wrong. The rapid transit line does earn my business. But at the same time, we don't take the bus everywhere because it is not convenient for long trips with transfers, and I likely have a higher threshold for explaining, "Honey don't stare at that guy with the foil and the lighter" than most well-off US parents. (In Europe we take transit all over.)
• kazinator 8mo ago
  A really stupid thing in the world of bus stops is the bus stop that is placed immediately before an intersection with a traffic light. The light is green, but someone wants to get on or off, so the bus has to stop at that stop. Then just as it is about to pull out, the light goes yellow.
  • nickorlow 8mo ago
    I think the main idea behind it is that it allows buses to queue up if many arrive at once without blocking the intersection
• adverbly 8mo ago
  How is this not a solved problem already? I'd assume people managing routes do this sort of analysis already. If they don't then sure give this a go in a few places and measure the results. Sounds like its worth a short if we're so off from EU.
  • nickorlow 8mo ago
    People complain to their local governments + sue transit authorities that try to do this because they like having a stop right outside their house
  • mcv 8mo ago
    We're talking about the US here; they're very good at ignoring solutions to solved problems. See city planning, traffic design, healthcare, zoning, etc. If it's not invented in the US, it can't possibly work there, they claim.
• spenczar5 8mo ago
  "Cheap" how? I have a friend who works on Seattle's bus planning. Removing a stop is a _lot_ of political work. When an elderly person depends on that bus stop being within a block so they can get to their doctor, and you're proposing to move it six blocks further away, that's essentially a _political_ cost. It might better in the system throughput, and those benefits may even outweigh the misery put on that one person. But in the US, we largely sort that out by using cool-down times, hearings, and "community input." Net result, according to my friend at least, is that bus stops feel _very_ sticky and hard to change.
  • nickorlow 8mo ago
    I think the article means 'cheap' as in it doesn't really require any new/expensive infrastructure and could theoretically be done overnight. Though, as you mention it's a big political ask (which is unfortunate).
• hinkley 8mo ago
  Waiting for the umpteenth bus stop when I used to commute by them, I kept thinking how much earlier I would get to work if we had bus lines that stopped every other bus stop with strategically placed transfer stations, where you could switch between them or catch a bus going perpendicular to the first route.
• collabs 8mo ago
  One big dream I have is to have some kind of free of cost at the point of service micro transit -- my dream is basically uber pool without the uber. Vans about the size of a Ford Transit or even a fuller size bus up to 40 passengers that picks up and drops passengers where they are or where they want to go to all with the push of a button on their smart phone and lots of patience. The idea is to have a huge number of government owned public transit vehicles that don't follow any published route but dynamically change their routes almost like some kind of Google Maps or Uber Pool but all the data about where people take rides at what time of the day and where they go and where the hot spots we have are now fully available to the government to improve the fixed route scheduled public transit.
  • selimthegrim 8mo ago
    Doesn’t LA have these?
    • collabs 8mo ago
      As far as I know, the whole combination of: 1. free at the point of service 2. door to door service 3. reasonable wait time 4. not a pilot project with half a dozen buses or a limited time has been done anywhere. I would love to be proven wrong.
  • rangestransform 8mo ago
    Much of the world has a primitive version of this but unionized bus drivers prevent this from being economical in the west. It’s absolute comedy that NYC has a full fleet of 40 foot buses operating on its narrow streets, obstructing traffic, and forcing drivers to reverse to make turns. I hope they go the way of the buggy whip maker when autonomy is good enough for NYC, they’ve been holding us back from having so many nice things including smaller and more frequent buses.
• throw7 8mo ago
  Where I'm at, busy corridors have a bus that has fewer stops (https://www.cdta.org/brt https://www.cdta.org/brt).
• Moldoteck 8mo ago
  The most important factors for public transport usage is reliability (it comes on time) speed and frequency(under 5-10 min wait time depending on area). For high demand areas- trams, for lower demand - trolleys or busses. To achieve reliability speed and frequency transport needs own lanes and semaphore priority. If there are too few lanes - make one lane dedicated to pub transport and another - single direction for cars. Voila. You can start at worst with 15-20 min wait time, but reliable, and increase nr or units where demand is higher up to using a tram Everything else has secondary priority. Even the mentioned safety aspect - it'll matter much less if the next bus will come in 5-10 mins and you can skip the current one because of some drunk ppl.
• chung8123 8mo ago
  Public transport has an identity problem in the US. Trying to serve 100% of your market will result in a worse service for everyone. It needs to decide if it is for the handicap, the people that don't drive, the people that want to commute, etc. Making fewer stops helps the commute people and those that are able bodied. It doesn't help serve the people that are handicap.
• dec0dedab0de 8mo ago
  Please no. The only place I have extensively taken the bus is Philadelphia, which is listed as the shortest distance between stops, and I wish there were more stops. It gets very cold, and very hot here, no one wants to walk farther. If you want to increase ridership, make the seats wider and run more often.
• lctrcl 8mo ago
  > Nithin Vejendla is a transit planner in Philadelphia. I feel sorry for Philadelphia transit future, this article is totally delulu. Go to any major European city and look how the public transport works, and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel
• lctrcl 8mo ago
  > Nithin Vejendla is a transit planner in Philadelphia. I feel sorry for Philadelphia transit future, this article is totally delulu. Go to any major European city and look how the proper public transport works, and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel
• wink 8mo ago
  I live in a European city and I just used Google Maps to roughly measure the distance between the bus stops on the two lines I often use: 350, 350, 300, 250 650, 250, 300, 300, 350 It's fine. But we do have proper sidewalks between those.
• frankus 8mo ago
  I feel like the gist here is that "faster, better, cheaper: pick two" doesn't apply to sub-optimally-spaced bus stops. You really can have all three, at the cost of some political blowback from the people who used to have a shorter walk.
• DontBreakAlex 8mo ago
  YES! I moved to SF from Paris (where I spent my whole life before that) a year ago. I exclusively use lime instead of public transit because of how slow it is! Going from Folsom&8th to Mason&Girard takes 50 minutes! And you spend most of the time stopped! With a lime I can usually get there in 20 to 25 minutes. I would use my own bike that I use to commute to work if you could lock a bike without getting it stolen almost immediately.
  • IshKebab 8mo ago
    Folding bikes are the answer there IMO. You can just bring it into the office. You can get pretty good electric ones too now (probably a requirement for SF).
    • DontBreakAlex 8mo ago
      I can already bring my regular bike in the office. The problem is when you're meeting with friends, going to a restaurant, well anything that's not commuting to work...
• snjddkkdkd 8mo ago
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• crazygringo 8mo ago
  What a strange article. It only mentions in passing the success of express buses, which stop at e.g. one-tenth the stops. Like the SBS buses in New York City. On busy routes, these are already the main solution, because they stop at the main transit intersections where most people need to transfer. Reducing the number of stops for local buses doesn't seem like it will make much difference, for the simple fact that buses don't even always stop at them. If nobody is getting off and nobody is waiting at the stop, which is frequently the case, they don't stop, at least nowhere I've ever lived. Plus, the main problem isn't even the stop itself -- it's the red light you get stuck at afterwards. But the article doesn't even mention the solution to this -- TSP, or transit signal priority, which helps give more green lights to buses. If you're going a long distance, hopefully there's an express bus. If you're going a short distance, bus stop spacing seems fine. Also, what a weasel name, bus stop "balancing". It's not balancing, it's reduction. When the name itself is already dishonest, it's hard for me not to suspect that the real motive behind this is just cutting bus budgets.
  • savanaly 8mo ago
    "Bus stop reduction" makes it sound like it will make it harder to take the bus. But the point of the article is that's compensated by the buses being more useful because they get where they're going more quickly. So "balancing" seems apt to me.
    • crazygringo 8mo ago
      But it does make it harder to take the bus. That's the point. And as I pointed out, there are two proven ways of making buses actually much faster. This seems exceedingly unlikely to help, since buses already often skip stops.
• motbus3 8mo ago
  This looks a lot one of those lobbied fake science articles
• jonathanpdx 8mo ago
  > there are 3.2 feet in a meter No, there are 3.3 feet in a meter. I know it seems like a minor quibble but it makes me not trust the rest of the article.
• diacritical 8mo ago
  I'm in Europe and haven't experienced the US public transportation system, so I can't offer an opinion, but in my country the number of stops seem to have a negligible effect on the average speed. Most of the slowness comes from traffic. Where there are bus lanes, the bus can even be as fast or faster than a car. Some of our trams stop every 300 meters or so, but since they have dedicated lanes, they are pretty quick. Some of the stops are at intersections where a car would also wait. When the timing is right, and most often it is, the trams don't waste more time than would've been wasted just waiting for you turn at the intersection. Where there is a bike lane parallel to the cars, busses and trams, an electric bike with 35-40 km/h will usually be the the fastest method of transportation, especially if you cross on reds when there's 0% chance of a car hitting you. I'm talking about a busy main street with lots of lights and traffic, not a highway, of course. Busses with no dedicated bus lanes are slower than cars, because cars are quicker to maneuver and accelerate when needed. I think if out city made the busses (and trams, and trolleys) 2-3 times more frequent, most people would use them. It would be a difference of driving in traffic for 1 hour vs sitting in a bus reading something (or doom scrolling) for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Shorter stops means less walking, so it would incentivize people to use the public transportation more. The benefits are obvious - less traffic overall, less pollution, less energy used, less road rage, more time to chill, and so on.
• MaulingMonkey 8mo ago
  Skeptical notes based on my own experiences in Seattle (≈1148ft average per article - which might be considered high enough that the article already considers the mission for fewer bus stops a success?): Some of the routes I've taken had "express" variants that skipped many stops, yet still stopped at my usual start and exit. I never bothered waiting for them - the savings were marginal, and taking the first bus was typically fastest, express or not. Time variation due to traffic etc. meant you couldn't really plan around which one you wanted to take either. The buses already skip stops where they don't see anyone waiting for the bus, and nobody pulls the coord to request an exit, and said skipping tends to happen even during the dense rush hour. Additionally, stop time seems to be dominated by passenger load/unload. Clustering at fewer bus stops doesn't significantly change how much time that takes much, it just bunches it together in longer chunks. The routes where this happens a lot also tend to be the routes where they're going to be starting and stopping frequently for traffic lights anyways - often stopping before a light for shorter than the red, or after a light and then catching up to the next red. What makes a significant difference in bus speed is the route. If the bus takes a route where a highway is taken - up/down I-5 or I-405, or crossing Lake Washington, there are significant time savings. This isn't "having less/fewer bus stops", this is "having some long distance routes that bypass entire metro areas". Alternatively, buses that manage to take low density routes - not highways per se, but places where there are still few if any traffic lights, and minimal traffic - tend to manage a lot better speed, compared to routes going through city centers. They may have plenty of bus stops, but again skip many of them due to lower density also resulting in lower passenger numbers, and when they do stop it's for less time than a typical traffic light cycle. A passenger might pull the coord, get up to exit, stand while the bus comes to a stop, hop off, and watch the bus pull off, delaying the bus by what... 10 seconds pessimistically for the stop itself, and another 10 seconds for deacceleration and then acceleration back to the speed limit? Finally, there's also grade separated light rail, grade seperated bus lanes, and bus tunnels through downtown Seattle, that significantly help mass transit flow smoothly even in rush hour, for when you do have to go through a dense metro area. While these are far from fast or cheap to implement, axing a few bus stops isn't going to make other routes competitive when these are an option.
  • MaulingMonkey 8mo ago
• Growtika 8mo ago
  Great website design. Aesthetic next level
• wolfcola 8mo ago
  does the author ride the bus as their primary (or secondary or tertiary) form of transit?
• wolfcola 8mo ago
  What has been proven to increase bus speeds is bus-only lanes and congestion pricing. This article is some techno austerity slop.
• dzonga 8mo ago
  express buses that go straight from say point A (home) location e.g from a central point e.g Mall to central point B (downtown) can work wonders - if they're given highway access and bus only lanes, automatic green light access etc then smaller buses etc that run in a loop to serve the frequent stops but of course - you need cities that are designed better with electric buses - this is all achievable and economic
• rdevsrex 8mo ago
  The problem with riding the bus in the US is that you end up around a lot of undesirable people.
• bgnn 8mo ago
  Isn't the solution to this to implement bus lanes + express busses on rush hour instead of removing half of the bus stops. Every bus stop is amazingly valuable as it's the gateway to the public transit system. This doesn't mean every bus needs to stop at every stop along its route. This is not a magical European invention even, any busy Asian city will have sth like this. Bus lanes are much more effective than the express busses to increase ridership by the way. Busses avoiding the traffic jams while the cars getting stuck in them changes the mind of even the most hardcore petrolhead.
  • nearbuy 8mo ago
    Just because bus lanes are beneficial where feasible doesn't mean optimizing the number of bus stops isn't also beneficial. Clearly it's possible for there to be too many bus stops. You wouldn't put a bus stop every 30 ft. So it's also possible that some existing bus routes have too many stops, and spacing them out more would help.
• eddy162 8mo ago
  Work in the industry: way too many planners and transit consultants are fixating on too many stops as being a problem, likely since it's the one piece of infrastructure they can control when roads and traffic lights are designed for cars not people. Depending on the road network and land-uses, removing stops only 200-metres apart to make them 400-metres apart (the industry standard) could decrease access to transit within a 5-minute walk by anywhere from 10-50%+, so it's limited to where you can actually apply it without penalizing (ie. putting them outside of a 7-10-minute walk) so many customers that they look for alternatives. In Europe stop spacings are much longer even for local routes (over 400-800-metres), but this is because everyone generally lives within walking distance for their errands, so transit is used only for longer, more commute-like trips, where a longer walk for faster travel times makes sense. Accessibility is also less of a priority there so they're less sensitive to requests from seniors and those with disabilities, with many buses not being wheelchair accessible. In US/Canada, a lot of transit riders live over a 20-30-minute (often with hostile walking conditions like crossing highway ramps) walk from the nearest grocery store, school, pharmacy, etc., so they'd oppose adding 2-3-minutes of walking to shorten a 10-minute bus ride. Moreover, closely spaced stops are really only an issue in older (pre-war) downtowns where frequent stops are the result of decades of requests from residents (especially seniors) and from schools/churches/grocery stores/retirement homes/medical clinics. Out in the suburbs, buses usually bypass most stops, and schedules take that into account. And in places with amazing land-use like Pheonix and Vegas, you have long stretches of nothing so of course there'll be higher average stop spacings. Lastly, much of the time-savings from express routes (that skip stops) and bus stop consolidation/balancing, is from being more in sync with the lights, which are usually designed for through traffic (ie. a green wave). Transit Signal Priority can help achieve significant savings (over 10-30%+) without removing any stops, though moving stops to after the light makes it more effective (and even that can be politically difficult).
• ohgeekz_com 8mo ago
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• resonantjacket5 8mo ago
  I’m a bit confused why so many people are commenting as if bus stop balancing doesn’t work or that transit riders won’t accept it. From 2010s and 2020s plenty of transit agencies across America have been implementing bus stop rebalancing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, dc, Seattle etc and generally it’s been successful with speeding up buses. Of course there most of the low hanging fruit with notorious like bus stops every 200/300feet are a lot fewer and the remaining ones to rebalance are a lot harder
• mattlondon 8mo ago
  Yep this is a "problem" with buses in London. They stop all the time so you never get beyond about 15mph before you start slowing down again for the next stop. The 100% EV buses are better as they accelerate faster, but not by much. They are starting to introduce "superloop" buses that interlink the more suburban "spokes" for tube & train so you can go "across" London without having to go to the centre and then back out again. I.e. basically express buses that only stop at tube & train stations and other major interchanges. It is a great idea, but it has been done for political and ideological reasons. They have not introduced express buses for people who work in central London for example (so instead to get to central London on a bus from a suburb means stopping every hundred meters or so, so even with bus lanes progress is brutally slow). These buses going "across" are not actually that useful for most people I expect because people using transport for high-paying central London jobs will be going "in" not "across". It is the "working class" lower paying jobs that might benefit from sideways interconnects between the suburbs - this is the ideological/vote-buying reason they've introduced them.
• n8cpdx 8mo ago
  I’m surprised at the chilly reception to this article. I ride bus and MAX (light rail) in Portland and despite not being the worst offender, too frequent stops is quite noticeable. When the bus stops every two blocks to let one person on or off each time, it really slows things down. You can also notice when playing Cities Skylines. It is quite intuitive that making your transit stop constantly is not efficient. On the rail system, the system has been closing redundant stations and it has made it feel much faster. Small adjustments can make a big difference. Sure I’d like more transit investment, but that can be paired with using resources well.
• AndrewDucker 8mo ago
  So removing the bus stops costs you 2 1/2 minutes of walking (150 seconds). And gains you 20 seconds per stop removed that you pass. Therefore you need to pass 8 removed stops to break even. Which seems like quite a commute to me. I agree that low-stopping services are a good idea. Particularly in the suburbs. Use the high-stopping services to get people to the low-stopping services - and let them change buses for free/cheap. But I think that you still need regular stops, particularly if you are dealing with elderly people. And that in the middle of cities it's totally worth having a lot of stops, so that people can easily find one.
• f154hfds 8mo ago
  As a Pittsburgh resident who exclusively used bus for 5 years, this certainly seems like a reasonable take. In Oakland and Squirrel Hill the bus almost stops every single block - which always seemed kind of crazy. It's a _very_ common sight to see a beleaguered student miss their bus and successfully chase it down across multiple city blocks. I will give the PRT (formerly Port Authority) a shout out though: 1. Bikes are quick and convenient to bring along 2. The numbering system is intuitive enough that you can almost guess how to get to new neighborhoods 3. Accessibility is clearly a priority, and they successfully serve many disabled people
• zeristor 8mo ago
  London has the new SuperLoop buses, with fewer stops, maybe this article and the SuperLoop are born out of the same idea.
• maxdo 8mo ago
  We are on the edge of ai on wheels , fully private , autonomous, electric transportation. I hope buses will be re routed to the museum :)
• atleastoptimal 8mo ago
  > In England, where 28 percent of all bus passengers are on concessionary fares for age or disability, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said, ‘If a man finds himself a passenger on a bus having attained the age of 26, he can count himself a failure in life’. I think this general attitude is the source of the general poor quality of public transit in the US (even though the quote refers to the UK). Public transit is considered a mode of the designated underclass, and nobody making policy decisions considers themselves a member of that class. In the US you aren't really considered an "active participant" in white-collar society unless you have a car (though NYC is a notable exception to this maxim, it holds true in essentially all other cities)
• panick21_ 8mo ago
  One of the problems in the US is that buses stop often and have really shitty doors. Often only 2 doors. And even worse, sometimes everybody needs to buy a ticket from the driver. The buses are also smaller, with many fewer bendy-bus. So if you go to fewer stops, you could overwhelm individual buses. So if you want shorter distance between stop you need to optimize the ingress/egress with lots of doors. And you need a fast accelerating bus, like an electric or preferably trolley bus. But the US does the exact opposite, short stops with bad buses. But yeah, the US makes so many mistakes with buses, its actually crazy. Of course, many other make many of the same mistakes but usually only a few not all of them. Canada is also making many of the US mistakes, but at least in large cities their buses see far more use then in comparable US cities. So they are doing better while still having some feeling North American. So I agree, some amount of stop reduction does make sense in the US. And its attractive because its basically a 'zero cost' solution. But by itself its only a drop in the bucket. The real problem is car priority in all aspects of design and its total primacy in the way of thinking.
• dirk94018 8mo ago
  Hmm. Interesting thought but maybe not everyone without a car needs a bus? My favorite way to get around SF is an EUC. On the side walk, I'm a pedestrian, moving at 2 miles per hour. On the road I'm a car, moving at 30-40 miles per hour. In the coffee shop, I'm a guy with luggage. CALTRAIN is great for moving me and the EUC between San Francisco and Palo Alto. Truck takes me and the EUC to the coast for a swim.
  • j-conn 8mo ago
    (EUC = electric unicycle)
• deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
• gcanyon 8mo ago
  I think this is the video where math the world goes deep on bus stop placement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w-84UFzkZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w-84UFzkZQ
• dhosek 8mo ago
  I double checked because I was confused and nowhere in the article is “stop balancing defined”. I think it means reducing stops, but I couldn’t say with certainty. I will say that a simple measure like moving bus stops to the corner after the intersection can improve transit times. My uncle used to work for the Chicago Transit Authority and worked on a project to try to implement this, although it would appear from my own travels in the city that it was far from universally implemented.
• sholladay 8mo ago
  As a passenger, I often think to myself, "Why is the bus stopping here? There was a a stop just two blocks ago." Invariably, the bus then has to wait for someone to move out of the way before it can pull in. It's very inefficient. Stops should be about 10 walking minutes apart at minimum.
  • riffraff 8mo ago
    I think if the bus has to wait to pull in there's also an outstanding problem there. Having lived in EUropean cities with both efficient and terrible bus performances, the presence of separate lanes, large unencumbered stops or good urban architecture/road decor makes a significant difference.
• charlieyu1 8mo ago
  I wonder whether an express bus model would work. Frequently bus stops at regions A and B, while no bus stops in between (let’s say A is the city center and B is a large residential area and they are 5-10 miles away)
• insane_dreamer 8mo ago
  > This is why, despite having fewer bus stops, European buses have a higher share of total trips than American ones. I'm pretty sure it's the car-centric design of American cities that are the root cause of European buses having higher ridership. Nevertheless I agree with the basic premise of bus stops being spaced further apart where they are not.
• biscuit1v9 8mo ago
  I'm wondering if the author ever thought about signaling the driver via a button on the grab rail so it's not every stop(if the bus stop is empty so there are no passengers outside waiting to get in) but every 3-4 stops.
• BoredomIsFun 8mo ago
  I live a large post-Soviet cities, and the biggest difference between US and our system is that we do not need to press the button here when we want to leave. Yes stops are arguably sparser, but the buses are guaranteed to stop at every stop. A small detail that nonetheless removes anxiety of missing your destination. Get in, pay, get out.
• harvey9 8mo ago
  "whose ridership has bounced back more quickly after Covid than rail." I suspect that's because rail users are more likely to have jobs which can be done remotely. The writer might also consider that short distances between bus stops helps people who cannot easily walk longer distances. London is trying out some services which have fewer stops, such as the Bakerloop route which follows a proposed route for a new Tube line. Perhaps this combination offer is a good choice at least for urban areas.
• atalanta 8mo ago
  This so tracks with my experience of buses in NYC. They are the worst-ever option because they are so slow that they become de-facto unusable. In London, middle class people use the bus as a normal option, in NYC, only people on low incomes (like me as a student) ever use them and it's a downward spiral.
• manbitesdog 8mo ago
  Another big factor is that many areas of the US feature horizontal architecture instead of vertical ones (i.e. Los Angeles vs NY). A bus stop in those areas cover orders of magnitude less people given the same radius
• dwroberts 8mo ago
  Feel like this overlooks an obvious part of how buses work, which is that buses only stop at a stop if you press the button, or if there are people at the bus stop. The number of bus stops doesn’t actually matter even if they’re super close together - unless there are actually people waiting at all of them
• maelito 8mo ago
  This is obvious. Most people won't take the bus if it's too slow. Well in the US you can't bike without getting killed except in some rare cities, so cycling is not a competition, but it would replace the bus if it were allowed.
• pards 8mo ago
  The 47 Lansdowne bus in Toronto has this problem with at least three locations (on the short section of the route that I take): 1. In the Dundas/College triangle, there are are 2 stops less than 100m apart. 2. At the Queen St turnaround, there are 4 stops all within 150m of each other 3. At Bloor St, there are 2 stops 100m apart These are all within a single 2km section of the bus's 10km route.
• HexPhantom 8mo ago
  How much transit performance is constrained by operational details rather than megaprojects
• amelius 8mo ago
  You can remove bus-stops, but then you have to make sure that the sidewalks are human-friendly.
• youknownothing 8mo ago
  "The problem with buses is that they are slow" At least in Los Angeles, the main problem with buses (for me) is not that they're slow, but that they're disgusting. They're always dirty, and the people who ride it aren't particularly nice. I once rode the bus with a backpack, put it on the floor, and when I picked it up it was all stained with beer. I saw people drinking a soda can and then throwing it out the window. That's the main reason why I stopped riding buses.
• thedangler 8mo ago
  My biggest pet peeve about bus stops is when they are right at intersections and there is no bus lane or bus pull over spot.