8 ms·

But lots of people _do_ already ride buses! There are already current riders, and potential riders who are making these marginal decisions. Occasional riders wi

But lots of people _do_ already ride buses! There are already current riders, and potential riders who are making these marginal decisions. Occasional riders will decide between transport modes based on the trip - making marginal improvements (or regressions) would change the rate at which they choose to ride the bus. Even if every current person's mind has been completely made up based on past experience, there are always "new adults" learning to get around and forming opinions. So I strongly disagree: marginal improvements DO matter. And I agree with the author that this would be a relatively easy improvement to deliver for many cities. I live in Chicago with the third-closest stop spacing per the article. I'm personally able to walk a block or two further to a bus stop no problem. Bus stop consolidation would save me a lot of time over the course of a year!

miltonlost 7mo ago
> I live in Chicago with the third-closest stop spacing per the article. I'm personally able to walk a block or two further to a bus stop no problem. Bus stop consolidation would save me a lot of time over the course of a year! Until there' a snowstorm, and no one shovels. And you have a broken leg, or are elderly, or disabled. Sure, it might save you personally some time, but we live in a society and should try to help out the one's who need help.
- kjkjadksj 7mo ago
  The solution for that is offering express routes not forcing everyone onto a slow frequently stopping local bus and making everyone worse off for it.
  - cozzyd 7mo ago
    that's right, the best solution is probably something like every other bus (excepting very low frequency buses that have fewer than 5-6 buses per hour) to only stop at every other stop (of course always including interchange points).
- crummy 7mo ago
  So... Should the bus stops be even closer together?
- ecshafer 7mo ago
  Does Chicago not mandate people shovel their drives ways? In most towns/cities in upstate new york you can get a fine if you don't shovel your sidewalk.
  - SoftTalker 7mo ago
    I'm not in Chicago but where I am you have 24 hours after the snow stops to shovel your sidewalk. And realistically, they don't start handing out fines until at least a few days after that, if at all.
  - Filligree 7mo ago
    What? Why do they care whether people shovel their driveway?
    - JoeMerchant 7mo ago
      sidewalk, not driveway. It's so folks can walk on said sidewalk.
  - fuzzzerd 7mo ago
    Chicago does have rules for timely show removal on sidewalks. In practice I have never heard of anyone receiving a fine even when the walk in front of a property remains uncleared for weeks on end. There is essentially little to no enforcement.
- mcv 7mo ago
  It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. It's unavoidable that most people are going to have to walk a bit. How far is reasonable, is a matter of trade-offs. It also depends on how fine grained the network is. If there are buslines every block, it's annoying if they don't stop there. But you have to walk a block or two to get to a bus line anyway, walking that bit more to get to the stop itself, matters a lot less.
  - JoshTriplett 7mo ago
    > It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient, if you can afford to use it. (That load-bearing "if" is important, though.)
    - njarboe 7mo ago
      Self driving cars for hire (Waymo, Tesla, others) can be that point-to-point system that is affordable. We will just have to build tunnels to deal with the increase in traffic. Hopefully the Boring Company or someone else can get tunneling costs way down.
      - JoshTriplett 7mo ago
        Hopefully someone else, so it actually happens and isn't overpromised and underdelivered. (Also, tunnels are useful not just for the increase in traffic, but for moving car traffic away from non-car traffic, which makes both kinds of traffic safer, faster, and more efficient.)
      - janalsncm 7mo ago
        If you are not being facetious, what you are describing is closer to a subway system, which has the disadvantage of being very expensive.
      - mulmen 7mo ago
        As long as one of those points is a transit stop then yeah, robotaxis make sense. In that model you don’t need the tunnels. They make even more sense if they are a bit larger and can accommodate multiple people at once. Something like a large van or small bus.
Retric 7mo ago
> I'm personally able to walk a block or two further “A block or 2” each way at the start and destination is a significant difference (4-8 blocks) for most elderly people. Busses fill two different roles, as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation. They can serve a vital role for cities without the kind of investment it would take to make most typical HN reader consider them as a primary means of transportation. As such latency isn’t necessarily as critical vs coverage here.
- eptcyka 7mo ago
  Sure, lets have the minority of the population force us into design choices that are detrimental to the majority of bus users. When living in many a European city, I have chosen to walk instead of using a bus route due to the frequent stops making the bus trip a lot more expensive and marginally quicker. I have also lived in places where the eldery get a separate service, tailored to them, if they need it. Works a lot better IMO.
  - LorenPechtel 7mo ago
    How about a compromise: Alternate buses stop on the one-mile points only.
- bccdee 7mo ago
  > as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation One bus route can't wear two hats. Faster, sparser routes are typically complemented by slow, meandering collector routes which provide the kind of backstop you describe. Moreover, elderly and disabled people can use paratransit [1], which exists precisely to serve people with mobility issues too severe for regular transit. Anyway, I reject the notion of buses as a second-tier transit option reserved for poor and disabled people. The only way poor people ever get decent service is when they use the same infrastructure that affluent people do. A bus system that doesn't serve the middle class is a system that will quickly lose its funding and become inadequate for anyone to use. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit
wsatb 7mo ago
I also live in Chicago and wouldn’t mind walking extra to another stop, but Chicago also has a massive traffic problem, particularly post pandemic. During rush hour, the bus is stop and go already. I’m really curious how this would pan out here, but it can’t be the only solution.
- femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
  The traffic downtown is really nuts now that the bridges are all shut down.
- tcoff91 7mo ago
  I think the only way to solve this is to invest much more into making buses nicer & increasing the numbers, and then instituting bus-only lanes on major arterial roads so that taking the bus becomes faster than fighting traffic.
  - femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
    Chicago has already done all of those things unfortunately (or fortunately).
    - coryrc 7mo ago
      If they have bus-only lanes then they won't be stuck in traffic, so I don't think they have.
      - tcoff91 7mo ago
        Yeah if they aren't enforcing the bus-only aspect then it's not really a bus-only lane. If a bus only lane exists but people violate it in cars with impunity then obviously it's not going to work.
      - femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
        Bus only lanes exist, but not everywhere (some streets are not wide enough). Additionally, at the moment (and really always) there's a ton of construction on the bridges going in and out of the city, causing buses to miss out on the bus-only lanes for years or more at a time. Bus systems are a complicated beast.
janalsncm 7mo ago
Marginal changes cut in both directions. The transport duration between A and B is only one part of the calculation. A rider also needs to get from their starting point to A, and from B to their destination. Decreasing the number of As and Bs by half might reduce that 20% start/stop time by half, shaving 10% off the total time. (This is ignoring the fact that more people will need to board and leave at each stop, which might mean in reality you’re saving like 8%.) But you will also increase the distance walked to the bus stop. That means battling cars and weather.
- tr_user 7mo ago
  You could just have two bus stops. People who live and work at both ends will be very happy. But everyone else gets thrown under the bus.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - natecham 7mo ago
    Why stop there. Build enough buses for everybody so they can choose where those two stops are.
    - terminalshort 7mo ago
      Great idea! And then what if we went even further and made enough busses so we could all have one waiting at our houses at all times?
      - mattmaroon 7mo ago
        And then what if you owned the bus so it was super convenient. And maybe made it smaller so it was easier to drive and park. Just like a little 4 seat bus you could just have all the time. I bet that would be popular!
      - sethammons 7mo ago
hardolaf 7mo ago
I also live in Chicago but unlike you, I have musculoskeletal issues that can be minor to the point of not noticing or to the point of it being painful to walk more than 2-3 blocks at a time. So doubling the distance between blocks would be the difference between me being able to use the bus and me needing to drive or use the far more expensive for taxpayers paratransit service. And beyond that, the 6% of average time savings seen in studies of similar systems would be about the same improvement as adding curb bump outs which would save the bus time by not needing to repeatedly merge back into traffic. And that work is already happening across the city without inconveniencing anyone or causing users with disabilities from being discriminated against by armchair urban planners.

miltonlost 7mo ago

> I live in Chicago with the third-closest stop spacing per the article. I'm personally able to walk a block or two further to a bus stop no problem. Bus stop consolidation would save me a lot of time over the course of a year! Until there' a snowstorm, and no one shovels. And you have a broken leg, or are elderly, or disabled. Sure, it might save you personally some time, but we live in a society and should try to help out the one's who need help.

kjkjadksj 7mo ago
The solution for that is offering express routes not forcing everyone onto a slow frequently stopping local bus and making everyone worse off for it.
- cozzyd 7mo ago
  that's right, the best solution is probably something like every other bus (excepting very low frequency buses that have fewer than 5-6 buses per hour) to only stop at every other stop (of course always including interchange points).
crummy 7mo ago
So... Should the bus stops be even closer together?
ecshafer 7mo ago
Does Chicago not mandate people shovel their drives ways? In most towns/cities in upstate new york you can get a fine if you don't shovel your sidewalk.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  I'm not in Chicago but where I am you have 24 hours after the snow stops to shovel your sidewalk. And realistically, they don't start handing out fines until at least a few days after that, if at all.
- Filligree 7mo ago
  What? Why do they care whether people shovel their driveway?
  - JoeMerchant 7mo ago
    sidewalk, not driveway. It's so folks can walk on said sidewalk.
- fuzzzerd 7mo ago
  Chicago does have rules for timely show removal on sidewalks. In practice I have never heard of anyone receiving a fine even when the walk in front of a property remains uncleared for weeks on end. There is essentially little to no enforcement.
mcv 7mo ago
It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. It's unavoidable that most people are going to have to walk a bit. How far is reasonable, is a matter of trade-offs. It also depends on how fine grained the network is. If there are buslines every block, it's annoying if they don't stop there. But you have to walk a block or two to get to a bus line anyway, walking that bit more to get to the stop itself, matters a lot less.
- JoshTriplett 7mo ago
  > It's not feasible to have a bus stop right in front of every house. And this is why point-to-point transportation is almost always faster and more convenient, if you can afford to use it. (That load-bearing "if" is important, though.)
  - njarboe 7mo ago
    Self driving cars for hire (Waymo, Tesla, others) can be that point-to-point system that is affordable. We will just have to build tunnels to deal with the increase in traffic. Hopefully the Boring Company or someone else can get tunneling costs way down.
    - JoshTriplett 7mo ago
      Hopefully someone else, so it actually happens and isn't overpromised and underdelivered. (Also, tunnels are useful not just for the increase in traffic, but for moving car traffic away from non-car traffic, which makes both kinds of traffic safer, faster, and more efficient.)
    - janalsncm 7mo ago
      If you are not being facetious, what you are describing is closer to a subway system, which has the disadvantage of being very expensive.
    - mulmen 7mo ago
      As long as one of those points is a transit stop then yeah, robotaxis make sense. In that model you don’t need the tunnels. They make even more sense if they are a bit larger and can accommodate multiple people at once. Something like a large van or small bus.

Retric 7mo ago

> I'm personally able to walk a block or two further “A block or 2” each way at the start and destination is a significant difference (4-8 blocks) for most elderly people. Busses fill two different roles, as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation. They can serve a vital role for cities without the kind of investment it would take to make most typical HN reader consider them as a primary means of transportation. As such latency isn’t necessarily as critical vs coverage here.

eptcyka 7mo ago
Sure, lets have the minority of the population force us into design choices that are detrimental to the majority of bus users. When living in many a European city, I have chosen to walk instead of using a bus route due to the frequent stops making the bus trip a lot more expensive and marginally quicker. I have also lived in places where the eldery get a separate service, tailored to them, if they need it. Works a lot better IMO.
- LorenPechtel 7mo ago
  How about a compromise: Alternate buses stop on the one-mile points only.
bccdee 7mo ago
> as primary means of transportation and arguably more importantly as a backup means of transportation One bus route can't wear two hats. Faster, sparser routes are typically complemented by slow, meandering collector routes which provide the kind of backstop you describe. Moreover, elderly and disabled people can use paratransit [1], which exists precisely to serve people with mobility issues too severe for regular transit. Anyway, I reject the notion of buses as a second-tier transit option reserved for poor and disabled people. The only way poor people ever get decent service is when they use the same infrastructure that affluent people do. A bus system that doesn't serve the middle class is a system that will quickly lose its funding and become inadequate for anyone to use. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratransit

wsatb 7mo ago

I also live in Chicago and wouldn’t mind walking extra to another stop, but Chicago also has a massive traffic problem, particularly post pandemic. During rush hour, the bus is stop and go already. I’m really curious how this would pan out here, but it can’t be the only solution.

femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
The traffic downtown is really nuts now that the bridges are all shut down.
tcoff91 7mo ago
I think the only way to solve this is to invest much more into making buses nicer & increasing the numbers, and then instituting bus-only lanes on major arterial roads so that taking the bus becomes faster than fighting traffic.
- femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
  Chicago has already done all of those things unfortunately (or fortunately).
  - coryrc 7mo ago
    If they have bus-only lanes then they won't be stuck in traffic, so I don't think they have.
    - tcoff91 7mo ago
      Yeah if they aren't enforcing the bus-only aspect then it's not really a bus-only lane. If a bus only lane exists but people violate it in cars with impunity then obviously it's not going to work.
    - femiagbabiaka 7mo ago
      Bus only lanes exist, but not everywhere (some streets are not wide enough). Additionally, at the moment (and really always) there's a ton of construction on the bridges going in and out of the city, causing buses to miss out on the bus-only lanes for years or more at a time. Bus systems are a complicated beast.

janalsncm 7mo ago

Marginal changes cut in both directions. The transport duration between A and B is only one part of the calculation. A rider also needs to get from their starting point to A, and from B to their destination. Decreasing the number of As and Bs by half might reduce that 20% start/stop time by half, shaving 10% off the total time. (This is ignoring the fact that more people will need to board and leave at each stop, which might mean in reality you’re saving like 8%.) But you will also increase the distance walked to the bus stop. That means battling cars and weather.

tr_user 7mo ago
You could just have two bus stops. People who live and work at both ends will be very happy. But everyone else gets thrown under the bus.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- natecham 7mo ago
  Why stop there. Build enough buses for everybody so they can choose where those two stops are.
  - terminalshort 7mo ago
    Great idea! And then what if we went even further and made enough busses so we could all have one waiting at our houses at all times?
    - mattmaroon 7mo ago
      And then what if you owned the bus so it was super convenient. And maybe made it smaller so it was easier to drive and park. Just like a little 4 seat bus you could just have all the time. I bet that would be popular!
    - sethammons 7mo ago

hardolaf 7mo ago

I also live in Chicago but unlike you, I have musculoskeletal issues that can be minor to the point of not noticing or to the point of it being painful to walk more than 2-3 blocks at a time. So doubling the distance between blocks would be the difference between me being able to use the bus and me needing to drive or use the far more expensive for taxpayers paratransit service. And beyond that, the 6% of average time savings seen in studies of similar systems would be about the same improvement as adding curb bump outs which would save the bus time by not needing to repeatedly merge back into traffic. And that work is already happening across the city without inconveniencing anyone or causing users with disabilities from being discriminated against by armchair urban planners.