5 ms·

Exactly. A method that does work is to make the full bus exit-only: no new passengers are allowed to enter the bus. You keep that bus exit-only until it has cau

by jules 11y ago

Exactly. A method that does work is to make the full bus exit-only: no new passengers are allowed to enter the bus. You keep that bus exit-only until it has caught up to its schedule. This also works fine with trolley buses. Unfortunately this is hard to match with human psychology of the people trying to enter a bus.

_delirium 11y ago
I've seen this happen, but it works better w/ human psychology if the buses are frequent (and people know they are frequent). If it's a bus with a typical headway of 5-10 minutes then it's generally ok; if buses only come 2-3 times per hour, being skipped to improve the spacing of buses is really annoying/inconvenient since passengers aren't confident of another bus coming soon. An alternative sometimes used in systems that have infrequent buses is to schedule the route with some slack in the schedule, so the bus is almost always "ahead of schedule". Then it waits at certain designated timepoints until the scheduled time, which re-syncs it with the schedule. This slows down the route overall (since the bus is periodically just sitting at a timepoint for a few minutes), but improves its predictability / adherence to the published schedule. I think I first ran across this in Miami.
derefr 11y ago
On routes that are heavily front-loaded (a connection from a metro line to a neighbourhood the metro doesn't reach, for example), this can result in the first five-to-ten stops on the route effectively being knocked out during rush hour. Anybody who actually wants to catch the bus has to walk ten blocks over to the first stop.
- flinty 11y ago
  A display at the bus stop showing when the next 3-5 buses are going to stop approximately solves the problem
  - juliangregorian 11y ago
    It really helps. In New York some subway lines have this and some do not. On the lines that do not, you sometimes hear the conductor announce "there is a train immediately behind this one" but it's not nearly as effective as when everyone waiting on the platform has been able to see that.
- jules 11y ago
  You would only do this during times when the throughput of the system is still higher than the arrival rate of people. It's essentially trading throughput for reduced latency. During rush hour you need throughput.

by jules 11y ago

_delirium 11y ago

I've seen this happen, but it works better w/ human psychology if the buses are frequent (and people know they are frequent). If it's a bus with a typical headway of 5-10 minutes then it's generally ok; if buses only come 2-3 times per hour, being skipped to improve the spacing of buses is really annoying/inconvenient since passengers aren't confident of another bus coming soon. An alternative sometimes used in systems that have infrequent buses is to schedule the route with some slack in the schedule, so the bus is almost always "ahead of schedule". Then it waits at certain designated timepoints until the scheduled time, which re-syncs it with the schedule. This slows down the route overall (since the bus is periodically just sitting at a timepoint for a few minutes), but improves its predictability / adherence to the published schedule. I think I first ran across this in Miami.

derefr 11y ago

On routes that are heavily front-loaded (a connection from a metro line to a neighbourhood the metro doesn't reach, for example), this can result in the first five-to-ten stops on the route effectively being knocked out during rush hour. Anybody who actually wants to catch the bus has to walk ten blocks over to the first stop.

flinty 11y ago
A display at the bus stop showing when the next 3-5 buses are going to stop approximately solves the problem
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  It really helps. In New York some subway lines have this and some do not. On the lines that do not, you sometimes hear the conductor announce "there is a train immediately behind this one" but it's not nearly as effective as when everyone waiting on the platform has been able to see that.
jules 11y ago
You would only do this during times when the throughput of the system is still higher than the arrival rate of people. It's essentially trading throughput for reduced latency. During rush hour you need throughput.