7 ms·
I commute in LA and observe (and am impacted) by this regularly; so much so, that I've been meaning to write the municipal operator about solving the issue, or
by AceyMan 11y ago
I commute in LA and observe (and am impacted) by this regularly; so much so, that I've been meaning to write the municipal operator about solving the issue, or at least reduce the tendency (attractor?).
My mitigation idea: When the buses become bunched; the forward bus should switch to 'Disembark Only' mode. (Most modern buses I've seen have a preset to post this on the LED signage). This way it can pass all the stops with folks waiting and (we hope) will make enough time up to get far enough down the line to remain un-bunched.
Then, by some condition (e.g.,"back to within 5 minutes of posted schedule") switch back to normal "pickup & drop-off" mode.
It's very cool to see someone else noticing and thinking about this phenomena.
To quote the great thinker Yogi Berra, "You can observe a lot just by watching."
- bluehawk 11y agoI think this would work well, but my gut reaction is that a passenger who is already annoyed at a late bus watching that bus just go right on by would be unappreciative.
- charliepark 11y agoA couple of tweaks that might make it less problematic for you: 1. Bus #1's signage updates so it doesn't show the bus route externally; it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by 2. Bus #2 (which is ostensibly no more than half a block away) has an N% discount for passengers (where N increases according to demand). 3. When Bus #1 gets "bumped" (metaphorically) by Bus #2, bus company regulations have it pull over and let Bus #2 pass it; therefore, the less-crowded Bus #2 can pick up more of the waiting passengers. [Edit: Oh; I see this has been covered in some other comments already.]
- r00fus 11y agoDiscount is a great idea - but if passengers are regular riders (monthly bus pass) - it's not clear what you can offer them for their annoyance.
- ekianjo 11y agoOffer them taxi tickets :)
- baddox 11y ago> it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by It's not always so easy to trick people. For me, in SF, there are often bus stops with either only one bus line, or with multiple bus lines that will all take me to my destination.
- dredmorbius 11y ago"Out of Service" or "Charter".
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoGetting caught lying will make it even worse.
- dredmorbius 11y agoTechnically, the signage is correct ;-)
- dorian-graph 11y ago> 1. Bus #1's signage updates so it doesn't show the bus route externally; it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by They do that sometimes here in Brisbane, Australia.
- soperj 11y agountil they realize that there is a bus coming within 5 minutes? Also, this means that the bus is less likely to be late.
- Sir_Substance 11y agoIt may be that one day, you'll be standing at a bus stop with no shelter in 46c weather with no water or hat waiting for a bus that is 20 minutes late. If and when that happens, you'll understand why I once hit the external emergency door override for a bus that tried to drop off a passenger but not let me on, and gave the busdriver an earful when he tried to close the door on my arm. Not everyone lives in temperate zones.
- judk 11y agoMaybe you should call emergency services when you are caught out unprepared for the weather...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Sir_Substance 11y agoAnother person who lives in a temperate climate. Let me break it down further, oh inexperienced one: Unless you're a pensioner, that's not going to kill you, but any person who would willingly leave another person in that situation for even 5 minutes is an arsehole.
- NLips 11y agoThen surely any person who delays the bus for many future passengers down the route is a much bigger arsehole?
- Sir_Substance 11y agoYeah. That'd be the bus driver. The guy responsible for driving the bus on time.
- r00fus 11y agoPerhaps changing the signage to something like "Bus Full - Next bus in 5 min"
- greggman 11y agoJust tell me the next bus is just a minute or 2 away and much less crowded. This happens in Japan too. The first bus is full with people packed in leaning on each other. Wait 20 seconds the next bus is empty and I get a seat. The problem is I don't know they are bunched when the first bus arrives. I assume that's the only bus and that if don't get on it will be another 10 - 20 mins for the next bus. If I knew the busses were bunched I'd be more than happy to take the less crowded bus.
- cortesoft 11y agoYour comment makes me think of this comic: https://xkcd.com/277/ https://xkcd.com/277/ I often times have the same thoughts, but I have a feeling there are lots of considerations that we aren't taking into account when we create our solutions.
- remarkEon 11y agoI thought of that yesterday when they turned on these new meters on I5 that seemed to do nothing. One thing the DoT could do to assuage our negative feelings is put the methodology out in the public after it's implemented. Show how the sausage is made, if you will. Then again, it's probably people who would otherwise be predisposed to looking up how a simulation would run in this case that would be less likely to whine in the first place. So it probably doesn't really matter, other than on principle.
- joshuahutt 11y agoWhy not open-source the methodology before it's implemented? They might get good feedback.
- stephen_g 11y agoAre you talking about ramp metering? If so, I was involved in a trial in Melbourne, Australia on a major highway there. In peak times, it can actually improve travel times by 50% and massively reduce congestion around the choke points you get just ahead of on-ramps. It depends on what algorithm they use to determine timing though - this was a coordinated, dynamic algorithm, but sometimes they are just manually set which isn't as good.
- remarkEon 11y agoI am! Do you have any datasets that you can release that I could look at? Or what the algorithms looked like? I'd love to be armed with some real facts the next time I get annoyed or my coworkers start complaining.
- 11y ago
- nilkn 11y agoIt would be quite neat if you could toggle this behavior on or off in this simulation, to see it in action.
- arnorhs 11y agobuses in san francisco do this. i have no idea how well it's working for them, but as a passenger, it's pretty frustrating to see your bus pass you by when you've been waiting 10 minutes already.
- demodifier 11y agoI regularly use Muni line 29. At least a couple of times a week, commute hour buses do this. Usually it works out okay for two reasons: 1. The next bus is right around the corner or I have my transit App to give an idea about delay if I cannot see the next bus yet. generally the delay is of teh order of 2 ~ 3 minutes. 2. The next bus is also has less people and the journey is thus more pleasant. Things do screw up at times though. This weekend, a driver did not stop and indicated that there was a bus following him. The App showed the next bus was 20 minutes behind. I had to catch a different bus after that. I hope this does not happen on working days.
- baddox 11y agoI don't think they're implementing this idea. The only times I have seen a bus fly by a stop is when the bus is clearly completely full.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Balgair 11y agoClearly you have not ridden the buses in LA then. I did this for 2 years to get about the westside. Even imagining that people would read the sign, or know the English language clearly enough to do so, is laughable. The average bus rider in my small experience (not talking about the actual average, that I do not know) is typically Spanish speaking, is crazy drugged out/drunk, or will not care no matter how much you try to reason with them. I kid you not, I have seen on more than one occasion a homeless person heave feces at the buses that pass them by when they are too full to legally allow more people on. Maybe not most, but enough of the population of passengers are too nuts to reason with that trying to enforce a disembark only policy will lead to deaths of drivers (not that the drivers are all that different than passengers either, you cannot believe that some are considered qualified to drive by any rational person). At the end of the day, trying to deal with real people leads to unreal problems.
- eru 11y agoPost the sign in Spanish and English, then?
- andrewliebchen 11y ago> At the end of the day, trying to deal with real people leads to unreal problems. It's funny you say this, because you've managed to reduce real people (transit riders) into an unreal stereotype ("crazy drugged out/drunk").
- empressplay 11y agoBuses in Vancouver already do this (or at least they did a few years ago), they'll switch the sign to "BUS FOLLOWING" or "DROP OFF ONLY".
- fffrad 11y agoBuses in LA actually do this. It says "Discharge Only". If you ever waited for a bus in LA for an hour only to see it come and not stop for you, you would feel differently. Even though a lot of people take the bus in LA, buses aren't really the cities priority. It has considerably improved in the 10 years I've had to take them but they are hardly reliable. You cannot take the bus without planning ahead. For the bunching problem, we can't simply add more buses because they will end up being empty. We can't have too few because it already feels like there are too few. I really hope there is a solution in the near future.
- ArekDymalski 11y ago>I really hope there is a solution in the near future. Some time ago I've read about an experiment (in one of Scandinavian countries I believe) involving buses with the routes completely depending on the passenger's needs (via mobile apps). Unfortunately can't find the link right now.
- hantusk 11y agoI believe its Kutsuplus: https://kutsuplus.fi/home https://kutsuplus.fi/home
- cafard 11y agoThe Metrobuses in Washington do this at times, though sometimes it is because there really is no room left.