4 ms·

Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled ar

Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled arrival of a bus and plan around that. However, if a bus is supposed to be running every 12 minutes, that's the number you can plan around (or use to benchmark the performance of a bus line). So instead of trying to show how the times compare with the theoretical schedule I think this would be more useful to show how the buses deviate from the planned interval. If I know it's a 12 minute bus that means I should never have to wait at any given stop for > 12 minutes. If I'm standing there for 30 minutes, then the bus service is failing me. It would also be useful to color code the historic tracks based on which trips ended up taking something like >10% or 20% longer than the planned time. Again not worrying about if it was late compared to the scheduled route, but just whether it was late relative to its own departure time and expected pace.

timr 12y ago
It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g. 47/49 on Van Ness), and you'll still routinely get three busses back-to-back, followed by 45 minutes of delay. The only reasonable scheduling mechanism I've found for MUNI is to know exactly how far away the next bus is from your stop. Without real-time position information it's an unusable system, because arrivals are essentially a poisson process.
- justizin 12y ago
  Muni's on-time percentage has actually improved in double-digits over the past couple of years, while the number of private buses blocking their stops has grown dramatically. In general, SF is not an automotive friendly city, and Muni buses have to compete with lots of _epic_ _horrible_ drivers. As both a cyclist and a pedestrian, I feel much safer around Muni drivers than around tourist, shuttle, and other private bus drivers, or even out of town drivers like AC Transit Transbay or Golden Gate Transit. Those motherfuckers are cray.
  - martinald 12y ago
    But London or Edinburgh are far, far less car-friendly than SF yet they don't have 59% on time performance. Something is seriously wrong somewhere if they are honestly averaging 59%.
- oneweirdtrick 12y ago
  nextmuni.com is pretty good as far as real-time position information goes. I don't think I've even looked at a published schedule for the last decade.
  - blaines 12y ago
    I agree, but it's useless at the beginning or end of routes as drivers don't depart on time.
- dougmccune 12y ago
  I don't know if you rode Muni before they had GPS tracking vs after, but you're right in that it's the only thing that makes the system at all usable. I used to use Muni for my daily commute back before they added GPS to the vehicles and it was an absolute nightmare. At the end of my work day the bus line I took was supposed to run every 15 minutes. It was fairly common for me to have to wait 45 minutes for that "15 minute" bus (and watch 3-4 buses on the same line going the other way pass by). The worst thing is just simply not knowing how long your wait is. Now at least you can check how far away the next bus is and know that you're going to be waiting a ridiculously long time (and call a cab or go to a coffee shop or do something). Even if the delays haven't improved (I don't really know), just the ability to track the buses makes the whole system incredibly more usable.
  - dekhn 12y ago
    Agree 100%. I used to work at UCSF Medical Center (Parnassus) and take N Judah from Outer Sunset. Typical case was I would start walking towards work (or, towards home in the evening) when I didn't see a train. Although the N-Judah schedule was "every 15 minutes", there were often ~45min-1hour delays ,which was enough time to quickly walk from Parnassus to Outer Sunset. Of course, it didn't help that many trains stopped at 19th or Sunset and turned around rather than going the whole way (which meant you'd have to wait another 15-45 minutes for the next train, if it didn't turn around). Another problem was at the turnaround at La Playa- drivers would disappear into the Muni bathroom there for half an hour, and block all the subsequent trains. Eventually (this was ~2000) Muni put a full time supervisor on site who "watched" the drivers and knocked on the door to get them to go back to their trains. Eventually they started using the switching in the track to skip a few trains in front of slow ones, as well. More recently I've gone back and the psychological advantage of knowing how long I have to wait has improved the experience a bit.
  - timr 12y ago
    Yep. And it's more than just psychological: say I have to be somewhere that's 15 minutes away by bus, and 30 minutes away by foot (this is common for me). A random 20 minute delay in the bus arrival means that it's now more reliable for me to just allow the time to walk where I'm going. I routinely find this to be true even for the underground lines on Market. It's absolutely pathetic that walking is more reliable than taking a subway, but that's the state of MUNI today.
- spacehome 12y ago
  > arrivals are essentially a poisson process. The funniest thing I've heard all week.
- andrewfong 12y ago
  I noticed that certain lines on AC Transit in Berkeley would routinely have the three back-to-back buses problem and wrote a post on it a while ago: http://andrewfong.com/blog/2009/11/12/bus-scheduling/ http://andrewfong.com/blog/2009/11/12/bus-scheduling/ Long story short, having a slew of people trying to board and disembark at the same time creates a lot of delay. It seems like the sort of thing you could address by having trailing bus(es) during peak hours. But if you're just naively running one bus every X minutes that stops at all stops along a given route, you'll inevitably have back up issues.
  - timr 12y ago
    Definitely. Of course, MUNI compounds the problem by running absurdly small buses on popular routes (infrequently!) and stopping them nearly every block. I don't know what ridiculous decision making resulted in this system, but it's not as if the problems are difficult to diagnose.
- iamdave 12y ago
  >It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule Avoid Austin Texas at all costs then. We don't have a transit system, we just have these strange oblong boxes that look like buses. Some of them even bend and go really fast, but I refuse to call them busses just like I refuse to call the governing body that oversees them a "Transit Authority". CapMetro is HORRIBLE.

timr 12y ago

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g. 47/49 on Van Ness), and you'll still routinely get three busses back-to-back, followed by 45 minutes of delay. The only reasonable scheduling mechanism I've found for MUNI is to know exactly how far away the next bus is from your stop. Without real-time position information it's an unusable system, because arrivals are essentially a poisson process.

justizin 12y ago
Muni's on-time percentage has actually improved in double-digits over the past couple of years, while the number of private buses blocking their stops has grown dramatically. In general, SF is not an automotive friendly city, and Muni buses have to compete with lots of _epic_ _horrible_ drivers. As both a cyclist and a pedestrian, I feel much safer around Muni drivers than around tourist, shuttle, and other private bus drivers, or even out of town drivers like AC Transit Transbay or Golden Gate Transit. Those motherfuckers are cray.
- martinald 12y ago
  But London or Edinburgh are far, far less car-friendly than SF yet they don't have 59% on time performance. Something is seriously wrong somewhere if they are honestly averaging 59%.
oneweirdtrick 12y ago
nextmuni.com is pretty good as far as real-time position information goes. I don't think I've even looked at a published schedule for the last decade.
- blaines 12y ago
  I agree, but it's useless at the beginning or end of routes as drivers don't depart on time.
dougmccune 12y ago
I don't know if you rode Muni before they had GPS tracking vs after, but you're right in that it's the only thing that makes the system at all usable. I used to use Muni for my daily commute back before they added GPS to the vehicles and it was an absolute nightmare. At the end of my work day the bus line I took was supposed to run every 15 minutes. It was fairly common for me to have to wait 45 minutes for that "15 minute" bus (and watch 3-4 buses on the same line going the other way pass by). The worst thing is just simply not knowing how long your wait is. Now at least you can check how far away the next bus is and know that you're going to be waiting a ridiculously long time (and call a cab or go to a coffee shop or do something). Even if the delays haven't improved (I don't really know), just the ability to track the buses makes the whole system incredibly more usable.
- dekhn 12y ago
  Agree 100%. I used to work at UCSF Medical Center (Parnassus) and take N Judah from Outer Sunset. Typical case was I would start walking towards work (or, towards home in the evening) when I didn't see a train. Although the N-Judah schedule was "every 15 minutes", there were often ~45min-1hour delays ,which was enough time to quickly walk from Parnassus to Outer Sunset. Of course, it didn't help that many trains stopped at 19th or Sunset and turned around rather than going the whole way (which meant you'd have to wait another 15-45 minutes for the next train, if it didn't turn around). Another problem was at the turnaround at La Playa- drivers would disappear into the Muni bathroom there for half an hour, and block all the subsequent trains. Eventually (this was ~2000) Muni put a full time supervisor on site who "watched" the drivers and knocked on the door to get them to go back to their trains. Eventually they started using the switching in the track to skip a few trains in front of slow ones, as well. More recently I've gone back and the psychological advantage of knowing how long I have to wait has improved the experience a bit.
- timr 12y ago
  Yep. And it's more than just psychological: say I have to be somewhere that's 15 minutes away by bus, and 30 minutes away by foot (this is common for me). A random 20 minute delay in the bus arrival means that it's now more reliable for me to just allow the time to walk where I'm going. I routinely find this to be true even for the underground lines on Market. It's absolutely pathetic that walking is more reliable than taking a subway, but that's the state of MUNI today.
spacehome 12y ago
> arrivals are essentially a poisson process. The funniest thing I've heard all week.
andrewfong 12y ago
I noticed that certain lines on AC Transit in Berkeley would routinely have the three back-to-back buses problem and wrote a post on it a while ago: http://andrewfong.com/blog/2009/11/12/bus-scheduling/ http://andrewfong.com/blog/2009/11/12/bus-scheduling/ Long story short, having a slew of people trying to board and disembark at the same time creates a lot of delay. It seems like the sort of thing you could address by having trailing bus(es) during peak hours. But if you're just naively running one bus every X minutes that stops at all stops along a given route, you'll inevitably have back up issues.
- timr 12y ago
  Definitely. Of course, MUNI compounds the problem by running absurdly small buses on popular routes (infrequently!) and stopping them nearly every block. I don't know what ridiculous decision making resulted in this system, but it's not as if the problems are difficult to diagnose.
iamdave 12y ago
>It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule Avoid Austin Texas at all costs then. We don't have a transit system, we just have these strange oblong boxes that look like buses. Some of them even bend and go really fast, but I refuse to call them busses just like I refuse to call the governing body that oversees them a "Transit Authority". CapMetro is HORRIBLE.