[petcat]

> 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.

[stetrain]

There are two groups of people that you can optimize for. One is the group of people who already rides the bus. In most US cities this is a small group of people who have no real alternative.

The other is the group of people who might ride the bus if it were convenient. Not just in terms of accessibility to a stop, but also accounting for the journey time. If someone tries riding the bus and finds that a 20 minute drive becomes an hour with stops every single block, they might never ride it again.

In most US cities (outside of the few big ones with decent transit), public transit is basically treated as a welfare service for those who cannot get around by any other means. Not saying that this service doesn't have value, but making all decisions in that mindset isn't going to attract more ridership from those who could choose to drive instead.

[janalsncm]

In my experience, the problem was long wait times between buses and unreliable pickup times. That meant you realistically had to add buffer at each end of your trip: in case the bus was early and in case the bus was late. Not only was that more than 20% of my trip time, it was also mental overhead of worrying whether you already missed the bus.

The bus might come 2x per hour. Maybe 2:18 and 2:48. But it might come at 2:15 or 2:25. So you need to arrive at 2:13 and possibly wait 12 minutes. Or if you arrive late you might be waiting 30+ minutes.

Make the buses fast and safe.

[maldev]

I would ride the bus if it wasn't filled with crackheads. Stopped Bart when it went downhill and all the white collar people stopped riding it and it just became desperate people, homeless, or crackheads.

[pavel_lishin]

There are very, very few people in America who - when given a choice between driving and taking public transit - will take public transit, no matter how convenient the public transit is.

And in this example, how many stops would you have to cut to turn an hour-long bus ride into a 20 minute one, to compete with the car? You're effectively cutting it down to two stops - where you board, and where you disembark. That's just not a plausible way to organize a bus route, aiming it at one person with a car.

[krzyk]

When I was in SF, my European mind was astonished why bus stops are so often (and why there is a cable to pull, but that's a different thing). Considering that the area was less populated than my city. And we also have speedbuses that stop every second or third bus stop.

It was unreal.

In my city bus stops have 1km between them (sometimes it is 700m sometimes 1.3km) so about 3200 feet.

It is about 15min walk between each bus stop, so when I need to wait for bit longer I prefer to walk to the next bus stop, just to have something to do.

[ipdashc]

> and why there is a cable to pull, but that's a different thing

Huh... How is it set up where you live? I've ridden buses in Europe and I remember them having cables, or at least buttons.

[hirsin]

As someone on the great, late 8 (https://fixthel8.com/) in Seattle, I'd happily give up my stop to help it be on time more often. I have three other stops I can walk to within ten minutes of me.

SF is another good example of too many stops. It's honestly comical and I stopped riding the bus in SF at times because the stop count was painful.

[pvtmert]

Imagine the delays are so prominent, someone decides to make a website for CTA (call-to-action) and semi-regularly shares updates on it...

I've been to Seattle once, (ex-Amazon here) where the DevCon was held in the town while my team was located in Bellevue. I took initiative to rent a bike for a day (60$ for drop-bar gravel bike) I must say although I did not beat the time between Day-1 (Office across spheres) and Bingo (Bellevue office), it was not far off. Even comparing the "Shuttles" Amazon operated, shuttle took about 1h while ride takes around 1h15m. (Plus sweat)

> P.S: I would say I am in a "fair" shape as I ride quite a lot throughout the year.

[bluGill]

Nyc has a subway for longer trips. So shorter stops make sense as anyone with a longer trip should be on the subway. However most cities (in the world) are not dense enough to support almost redundant system and in those I believe the speed optimizationis correct.

time is important to bus riders, speeding up the buses helps them. It also attracts others. Only a few are harmed more than helped - but they tend to complain the most even though they are a minority

[lxgr]

> Nyc has a subway for longer trips. So shorter stops make sense as anyone with a longer trip should be on the subway.

That’s not how bus routes in NYC are organized at all.

[MisterTea]

> Nyc has a subway for longer trips.

Only if your trip is to Manhattan or along the line. Otherwise, in Brooklyn and queens, North-south subway service is almost non-existent. I live in South Queens a block from the A train. However, If I wanted to go shopping at Queenscenter Mall or along Queens Blvd, I have to take a bus up Woodhaven Blvd.

[wnevets]

We can optimize this further and remove all of the stops between the buses first and last stops. Drive time would be so much faster.

[pavel_lishin]

We can also make the bus smaller. And to give the passengers more agency, we can let them drive it. Instead of paying bus fare every time they board, they can pay a larger up-front cost for this bus, and of course, ongoing gas & maintenance. To make sure they don't pose a danger to others, they can also purchase insurance, and of course have some sort of license to operate it.

[toast0]

Where I live, the bus line that serves me only has maybe one marked stop. There's a bus depot at the ferry; every where else, you can just stand on the side of the road and wave your hand when the bus comes by and it'll stop for you; when you want to get off on your way home from the ferry, you push the button and let the driver know where to stop.

But that only works because density is low and there's only one plausible destination.

[pkulak]

Most optimization is a curve. Arguing for moving closer to the top of the curve is not the same as arguing for moving all the way to the minima on the other side. But why do I have to say that?

[rsynnott]

Some bus systems actually essentially do this for a fraction of buses.

[amiga386]

New York City already has fewer bus stops, or rather it has express buses that stop at fewer stops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Select_Bus_Service

[bpodgursky]

I don't wanna be rude but when someone spends months researching an issue, which systems work and which don't, you should probably give some level of grace and understand how they came to those numbers rather than spit out your first mindless critique.

[ryandrake]

Whenever I see an article, and the top comment is StudMan69 saying "Uh, no, the article's conclusions are all wrong!" I think to myself: "Gosh! If only the article's author had consulted StudMan69 before writing the article, he could have avoided making such a grave mistake!

[skipants]

I agree.

This:

> I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership.

is thrown out but how do we know it's true? That commenter throws it out as their opinion but my opinion is the opposite -- the stated preference will be that people think it's bad but the revealed preference will show even more ridership as travel times improve.

[petcat]

I ride the bus and I can tell you right now that I would be pissed if this guy took away my bus stop. That's my critique. I think it's perfectly valid.

[VLM]

Its a statement of religious belief, so other opinions are no less relevant that some "authority"

As a religious belief it would be inappropriate for me to report stats from my local cities bus service. First of all they didn't get into a religious opinion logically and rationally, so spouting numbers and facts at them will not make them change their mind. Secondly my local city has multiple simultaneous impacts so its almost impossible to estimate how their experiments with stop removal has affected ridership. The article falsely claims the only variable in the system is stop spacing whereas bus service is in extreme turmoil in most communities.

Pre-covid vs Post-covid is wildly different, there has been massive inflation in operating expenses, there's a long term decline in my area WRT passenger-miles before covid which seems to be increasing post-covid, fares have increased by a factor of a little over 4x since 1990 while incomes have roughly stagnated. The article claims the opex of stops is "high" but our city invested $0 (this is a low crime suburb LOL). We got rid of 1/4 of our routes (and drivers) and increased the standard of stop spacing from never more than 950 feet to an average of about 1100 feet now. The elderly and infirm were very mad and very loud about that and they are the most reliable voters out there but halving the fare quieted them down. We lose so much money on the bus service that giving it away for free wouldn't impact the budget very much.

Currently our opex per passenger mile is about $4.50. Fare for adults is $2. We lose about $7 per ride. The loss per rider would pay for two extra people to take an uber on the same route, so there are continual demands to scrap the entire system to save money. Empty buses driving around is causing more, not less, road congestion, and more, not less, environmental damage. Our "Unlinked Passenger Trip per Vehicle Revenue Mile" is about 0.6, which boils down to on average every mile traveled by a bus driver results in 0.6 passengers stepping aboard. Our routes are about 4 miles long and run about once an hour, so on average a driver picks up about three passengers per 4 mile trip. Our drivers are usually alone in the bus. Another way of looking at it, is on average we pay our bus drivers $23/hr, so an hourly route costs $23 in labor, and they pick up less than $6 in fares during each work hour... The ratios are better during rush hour... but worse outside of rush hour.

(edited: I don't understand some of the numbers on the report, if it costs $23 to pay the driver to run a route that picks up three people the fares can't be more than $6 so even if diesel and maint were free we lose $17 per hour per route, so why does the annual report claim opex per passenger mile traveled is only $4.50? After federal subsidies or similar?)

In the long run, an unusable bus service is simply too expensive of a luxury to fund and we'll end up eliminating it. I don't think changing distance between stops matters if the stops, and the bus, are empty, other than it makes sick and old people very angry. If almost no one uses it, it doesn't cost any extra to stop quite literally on every street corner or even stop at every driveway, so increasing stop distance merely makes people suffer needlessly, which seems unusually evil.

[Spooky23]

NYC is interesting as it has examples of everything. Dense urban, inner suburb-like service and a huge core.

Crawling busses are an issue all over the place. The easy way to spot it is when noticing stacked busses during peak periods.

These issues are really hard because they are fundamentally local and change is difficult and fraught with NIMBY bullshit. There is a strong inertia. My small city has a pretty good bus service that winnowed out surplus stops and added BRT. In the public hearing, one of the loud objectors to moving a bus stop 1000ft was that it would encourage inner-city youth to "rape and pillage" in the "good" neighborhood. We're literally talking two blocks away.

[HexPhantom]

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

[pkulak]

> I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership.

Oh do you now? Where do these suspicions come from? How much time do you spend on city busses? Do you have any idea how absolutely infuriating it is to be sitting on a bus while it makes stop, after stop, after stop, after stop, every single one a block or two apart, crawling down the road at a walking pace? All the while backing up traffic behind it and eroding whatever support the transit system had with the majority of the tax-paying public that never uses it.

I suspect that people find a destination on Google Maps, click the navigate button, see that the bus takes 3x as long as driving, and take their car or an Uber.

[VLM]

You're making suspicions about suspicions without numerical data.

According to my cities 2022 annual report (where are 2023-2025?) they provided precisely 464344 unlinked pax trips (UPT) so someone stepped aboard a bus and threw money in the real or virtual fare box 464344 times that year. "Sources of operating funds expended directly generated" which I read as annual fare revenue was $660748.

We have a very simple two tier system $2 for adults and $1 for seniors and disabled. 2(464344-x)+1x=660748 x=267940

So we only had 196404 healthy young adult bus riders that year vs 267940 senior citizens. Your experience is not unusual but also is by far not the majority; a SUBSTANTIAL majority of the people on the bus in my city are too old or too sick or too blind to take long walks in the rain, snow, ice, heat, cold, etc.

Honestly the bus is so slow, if they could walk, they'd probably just walk. So it should not be overly surprising that most on the bus quite literally can't walk, and really need bus stops close together for disability reasons.

So all of this theoretical "well it would be so much faster if there were fewer stops" is irrelevant if the served population is primarily physically disabled, and the system can't survive. And we'd be talking about excluding one of the most powerful voting blocks in the city, that being old people. Eliminating stops would eliminate or reduce 58% of the current riders which would shut the system down, I don't think it could politically survive a hit like that.

Ironically that shutdown might be good as everyone would be better off both financially and environmentally in cars than in buses. Bus exhaust is not exactly perfume to mother nature LOL, and essentially our bus program is not a transit system, its a corrupt jobs program for drivers, mechanics, and especially for highly paid administrators.