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.
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.
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
(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.
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.
> 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.
I don't think the goal is "fewer stops" in isolation, it's more about finding the spacing where the system functions more like transit and less like a hail-anywhere shuttle
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?
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.
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.
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
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
There's also a feedback loop here: if stops are too close, buses are slow and unreliable, which reduces ridership, which makes it harder to justify investing in either the stops or the surrounding pedestrian environment
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.
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.
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.
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.
113 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 78.6 ms ] threadI 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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/ [2] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/transportation-and-tran...
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'.
Unless you can address this fundamental problem "just walk more" isn't a viable option for transit users.
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.
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.