The Transit Policy Riders Love to Hate | Stop Spacing
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- Опубликовано: 15 мар 2024
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The space between transit stops might not seem like a big deal, but it's actually fundamental to how a transit system operates. Let's talk all about the science of stop spacing.
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I have felt the reverse nimbyism. "In MY back yard, dammit!" They removed the stop outside here, so I have to walk 500 m to the next stop (either direction). Major bus road, so the spacing was obviously too small, but still. 😆
Haha, 500 meters is a nice walk, I hope you enjoy a faster bus because of it!
That's like my walk to the Canada line station everyday to either station. (2 min ago)
Kids these days. In my area, they rerouted the bus completely and now I have to hike it 2 km to the nearest stop!
@@yorktown99 Headwind both ways, right? I know 500 m is just fine, but it used to be 50. Also, they only removed "my" stops, so the bus is faster for pretty much anybody but me. 😆
500m often isn’t a nice walk if you’re disabled though. It may well be so far that public transit stops being available to you.
here in London they have the slow bus hattrick: stops every 100 meters, a single door to enter and exit and every passenger needs to pay the fare one by one at a single terminal. Often the bus needs to queue because there are two other buses from the same line still serving the stop.
red lights don't give priority and despite efforts there are still many places where there is no separate bus line despite heavy traffic and ample space. This all leads to a situation where you're often faster walking than taking the bus, even for moderate distances. 😢
This is the same in many UK cities. People having to slowly get on the bus while paying.
It's so stupid! It wastes everybody's time. I've once kept track of the time, and I could save ~5 minutes on my 25 minute ride to work. This is 20%!
In my town I swear most of the time on the bus is spent sitting at one end of a corridor between parked cars waiting for an oncoming car to exit and the bus itself slowly weaving along said corridor. The roads are wide enough for two lanes, sometimes even three, but in practice there is one lane and it's very winding.
I always go downstairs a stop before where I need to get off (if im on the top deck) so the bus doesn't have to stop for as long.
The very regional train does have that problem as well. It's called "the Milk Jug Express", because it stops on every milk jug
I wrote my thesis on just this topic and modelled a stop removal program in my (European) city. The results showed many of the advantages you mentioned in the video (higher ridership, maintained frequency with fewer vehicles). However when the results appeared in a local newspaper people were (understandably) pissed. Partly because the article didn't really outline the advantages, but to a large degree you get a lot of people who all of a sudden become concerned with transit accessibility for mobility impaired people.
yep GRAmpops are loud
Usability matters more than travel time, especially in communities where car ownership is not the norm. In dense urban economies the choice is not between driving a car for 20 minutes vs taking a bus for 30 minutes, the choice is between taking a car for $30 vs taking a bus for $2.
which city?
@@FullLengthInterstatesshorter travel time makes transit more useful
@@BDub2024 Absolutely. In my opinion it is THE strongest argument against such action. My gripe with the argument arises not from the fact that it is made, but the context in which it appears. Even today a significant portion of the stops on the network aren't wheelchair accessible in the first place. When projects appear to remedy this, be it trying to combine 2 non-accessible stops into 1 accessible one, or just simple accessible conversion at the cost of some parking spaces, some of the same people speak out against these projects, even if the 2 stops were too close together in the first place. My city has a historic tram network set up when trams were maybe 10 meter long. Nowadays they're 40 meters long but still stop in many of the same locations. In the most extreme case this leads to a situation where the beginning of one stop is no more than 60 meters away from the end of the other. If it were a modern System like the one set up in nearby Strasbourg no one would argue for the stop density found here.
I think the reasons people might want more stops are not just distance, but also a lack of safe crossings at many intersections and poor amenities at stops. Walking further in many commercial districts in North America means more places where you have to look out for turning cars, and it's even more important to have proper shelter and seating at the stops to give people a place to rest.
on the other hand, having less stops would allow for fewer but higher quality stops with more amenities, a topic Reece has already discussed in a previous video. Tradeoffs
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For sure! Having to cross a stroad diagonally to get to your stop is going to add 5 very unpleasant minutes to your journey. You pretty much need a stop at every intersection when the streets are designed to be unwalkable.
I have heard of people having to cross a highway with no pedestrian crossing because the bus stop is only on one side of the road. It can often not be a real solution to walk further down the road either because the sidewalk just ends abruptly.
@@Spartan8278 Yeah, this is exactly the situation I face with the bus stop spacings near me, but on the other hand the nearest stop is well over 800m away anyway (more like 1.2km, with the only safe route taking 15 minutes to walk, and not really being a direct sidewalk route anyway)
This is why having express and local stops like in the NYC subway is a great solution
Washington, DC has some routes with express and local busses, which I really like
It is! But you have to weigh that too, because local and express subway is expensive!
And they kind of do that with busses as well.
It is definitely more expensive to have both local and express service, but we’ve got big businesses sucking hundreds of billions in profits out of the economy every year. Society definitely has the resources for it.
San Francisco has several bus routes with rapid equivalents that follow the same route but only stop at some of the stops (e.g. 5/5R, 14/14R, 38/38R). My experience is that you're usually better served just taking whichever one shows up first even if it's the local, versus waiting for the rapid. Depending on traffic, often the local and rapid buses get bunched together, even though it would be better for effective frequency if they could stay staggered.
As soon as I got an e-bike, I completely stopped riding the bus [in North America] for this exact reason. There are so many stops on my preferred routes that my nonstop speed on the bike ends up being faster than the bus! I also don't have to wait for an infrequent service or deal with delays that are outside of my control.
It would be cool if I could ride my ebike and park it at an express bus hub. Would open up the whole metro for me (assuming it is frequent) :)
The local bus i take to catch the train everyday has a stop spacing in some areas of just 60 METERS! A 3.5 Kms. Journey takes me aproximately 25/30 minutes
That's basically walking pace. Considered getting a folding kick scooter? You'd halve the time to the station at that rate.
That's barely faster than a brisk walking pace.
Sounds like you could just ride a bike...
That describes many of the bus and (even worse) streetcar routes in Toronto and why the service can be glacial. Stops way too close together.
@@milesmartig5603 True, but we have to draw a line somewhere and say "if you can't walk ## meters to a stop, the bus probably isn't the best transit for you".
I say this as someone who spent a large portion of last year temporarily disabled (recovery from **major** surgery). When I was able to go to the office again, I was just about able to manage to get from my closest bus stop to my door. If I wasn't, I was lucky to be able to work at home. [I'm back to health again, and walking my 2 mile commute about half the time.]
All cities with decent bus service also have "mobility" service. With some sort of proof (varies) that you can't take a normal bus, you can have a mobility micro-bus give door to door service, and help you get on and off the bus. Usually the cost is the same as a standard bus ride. I looked into this in my city, but I was able to get by without.
Stop removal can also lead to the combination of multiple lines, allowing one higher frequency route over two lower frequency one.
If routes are coordinated properly! But this requires a *lot* of coordination!
@@RMTransit since you're in the GTA, you know this happened over the winter at Durham Region Transit. Although I think that bus garage fire last summer played a role here too, not enough vehicles to service all their routes.
@@RMTransit why not have last mile served by on demand share taxis (only serving between the neighbourhood's side streets and the closest bus stop, unlike yellow cabs) which feed buses? Minibus sized vehicles would fit very well.
It occurred to me a while that trains/tram should have farther spaced stops because they accelerate and decelerate slowly. in Vancouver, Route 15 goes parallel to the Canada line so it can be used as a shuttle to the next station for those who live in between
@@erkinalp On-demand transit tends to be really expensive.
A bus stop every 100m is insane. It takes 1 minute at a casual pace. 400-500m makes more sense for dense areas. It's close enough that you might even consider walking to the next stop while you wait if the bus is 6mins away.
It's so frustrating here in NYC. The bus stops on our local routes (UWS Manhattan) can be every other block (or sometimes on multiple blocks in a row). It's so irritating when the bus can't even get up to speed before slowing down to stop. I'd love them to space the stops further apart and have more frequent service - both of which would decrease the time to your final destination.
NY neighborhoods have the population of entire cities, Manhattan is basically a whole state. Commuting end to end is like commuting from Albany to Buffalo, and you're asking to skip Syracuse. When most New Yorkers can't drive anyway and thus are not at risk of losing ridership, its more important that everyone gets convenient service.
New Yorkers are abandoning the bus in record numbers precisely because the system fails to meet international standards. People here aren't stuck riding transit - a substantial number of people will just hire a car, especially in the city. No one would commute end to end across Manhattan on a bus unless going East-West, which are served by select buses stopping every half mile. @@FullLengthInterstates
Think about who uses the buses. The majority of people I see on the M104, for example, are seniors and others with wheelchairs and walkers. On the UWS, the M104 parallels the (1) subway line, so the bus serves to fill in the gaps between subway stops. Many subway stops are still not ADA accessible, and paratransit in New York has its many issues, so the bus is all that many of these people have. At least in Manhattan, those who are able-bodied always have a choice between transit modes, and perhaps the bus is not meant to be the fastest one, but the most accessible.
It is the most interesting thing when it comes to bus stop spacing, in the online forums someone from the Upper Westside of Manhattan will complain that the bus stops are two close, and, and, and. Well, on the Upper Westside of Manhattan there are two direct major subway lines connecting the upper westside to downtown Manhattan. Here on Staten Island there are ZERO subways that connect direct to downtown Manhattan, or anywhere else! Here on Staten Island the buses run once every 20 or 30 minutes apart every day and at 30 minutes apart at night! Here on Staten Island the ferries only run 30 minutes apart every day and night, and for decades ran once hourly nights and major parts of the weekends. Here on Staten Island walking from one bus stop to the next will in no way ever be faster than the bus, because the buses really travel at speed along the roads, plenty of which do not have sidewalks on Staten Island. There are plenty of sections of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens where the bus transit system is not the best. It is most interesting thing when it comes to bus stop spacing and transit planning that the Upper Westside Of Manhattan is seen as the "problem area."
I really appreciate this response. Perhaps there should be more stop balancing in the outer boroughs where the bus is often the only transit and less so when it is "redundant" with the train? I disagree that ideally, the bus is meant to be the absolute most accessible - it should be as fast as possible for the maximum number of riders. Most accessible again is (ideally) for paratransit. But I think your insight contains a realism about NYC that a person just can't ignore - this city is pretty darn bad regarding accessibility, and it likely won't change soon. @@jsn683
This is sorta like BART, with far-spaced regional rail stop spacing outside of downtown SF, with frequent stops in the downtown core at subway-esque spacing.
BART the Star trek train
BART works! Now if only Metrorail would in Miami/Dade County!
@@AMPProf when you call your rolling stock the "fleet of the future"
Worth mentioning that the TOD is abysmal around the stops outside SF/Oakland. And a few of the core stops should have more housing nearby. (Looking at you, West Oakland.)
Working on it. El Cerrito del Norte and el Cerrito plaza are gonna be solid. Lots of projects along that corridor. MacArthur also very good… and then there’s orinda 😂 north Berkeley 😂
Philadelphia has comically close stops on bus and trolley routes. You can have a shouted conversation between adjacent stops. They've said they're going to "rebalance" the stops but, predictably, people are terrified of change and think it'd be a crime to walk another 0.1 miles to catch a faster bus.
Only an idiot would fear change so much and associate walking with criminality.
Optional Stops also help, where if no one request a stop and no one is at the stop it will just skip it.
Isn't that just a regular bus stop?
@@TheScrollLock1 At 4:30 it was mentioned that busses stop "even if no one is getting on or off"
@@nicolasvenegas9808 Ah, I missed that. STM bus drivers usually skip a stop if there's nobody getting on or off.
Optional stops are great to maintain respectable service in otherwise car-oriented suburbs where ridership might be low. Can have speedy service AND have short walking times if only few people ride, compensating for reduced service overall
Optional stops are fine for super low density car centric areas.
It's probably a chicken and egg scenario where that extra few minutes of walking might be the breaking point of attractiveness to walking to the bus stop if the street isn't pleasant to walk next to, but it's hard to put the time/money in to making a street more walkable if there's no demand for it already.
There's a few bus stops that are weirdly super close together , usually if it's like a normally spaced bus stop then a nearby point of interest like a park or school. I figure if you're going to a park you're already fine walking for a bit, and it's not like school aged kids don't have the energy to walk more or that bus schedules are lined up to perfectly match school times.
The bus route I take from work would actually be consolidated under a Transit Improvement plan if/when it gets implemented to remove some routes but more than double the frequency. While it might suck to have to walk/bike a bit further, the frequency new frequency (15 min) would be about as long as I've had to wait extra for a late bus, so that's an easy improvement.
Expresses buses are very good. The 10 in Hamilton was always nice to catch as a kid.
A very good example of an express bus is the 522 route on Santa Clara VTA, which runs almost identically to the 22 route. 522 stops at way fewer stops and the transit time from Eastridge Mall in eastern San Jose, CA to Palo Also, CA is much lower, too.
@@Sacto1654great line for sure! Wish there were some sort of transit lanes on the El Camino real though, because the road is just insanely packed from like 3 pm - 8 pm on weekdays
Do you have to pay a higher fare for express buses?
@@timcarrington5977 Not the one in Hamilton. (Also, not the buses that use the transitway in Ottawa, but that’s a different concept.)
@@fernbedek6302in Toronto my express bus alternatives to streetcar routes were double fare
Excellent video. However, in very busy central areas of cities closely spaced stops may be needed to avoid overcrowding on platforms. I live in Nottingham, where there are four city centre tram stops within a kilometre. But they are needed to avoid overcrowded platforms and long stop dwell times.
250 meters isn’t that close by the standards of a lot of bus systems here
250m to 300m is somewhat on a lower medium end in terms of stopping distance and to be fair, it's also fairly normal that there are more stops in high-demand areas.
333m is normal for a capilar system
But overcrowding can also be solved with higher transit frequency, which isn't possible with very slow service, exacerbated by too many stops! Idk about Nottingham but in the dense downtown Toronto area, it can often be faster to walk 25 minutes from a subway station instead of taking a bus or streetcar (tram) because they are so slow and often behind schedule. There are stops at almost every intersection, sometimes less than 200m apart, which is ridiculous especially in peak hour traffic!
@@roadrollerdio565 The purpose of transit is so people without cars can zone out at the stop, and then zone out once they board. Briefly being able to out-run the transit vehicle in a congested area is not really that bad of a problem
In the UK, planning guidance is that a location is served by a bus stop if the stop is within 300 metres.
Yeah that’s not very good, probably representative of the often slow state of UK buses
@@RMTransitI'd say that's a pretty good balance. And for the slow state of buses we might want to talk about front-door boarding.
It's the same in my region. For longer routes you can use the S-Bahn or some tram lines, for further contribution there are slower bus and tram routes with stops very close to each other.
@@warmike its a bit too close really, should be more like 500m
@@cooltwittertagat the destination I might take it, near home that's a deterrent for me as the stress of making a connection in time makes long walks an unpleasant experience
I think, its important, that there are layers of transit service in a city. A layer for very local transit, a layer for cross city transit and one for transit between the central city and adjacent communities. It could be more than 3, or if it's a small city just 2 layers. But in any proper city it should be more than just one mode of average speed/connectivity ratio, that is available. Also, very local transit should mean, that the space between stops is no less than perhaps 500 meters, because that's a distance, that most people can easily walk.
100% this! One thing I noticed when surface (i.e. bus and tram) transportation run in parallel to metros is that the former makes two or three stops for every stop of the latter. Schönhauser Allee in Berlin is a good example: It's served by U-Bahn and tram alike but the former makes a stop around every kilometre whereas the latter around half a kilometre which results in two tram stops every U-Bahn stop.
Totally agree. Busy routes can easily handle 2 or 3 layers even when it's only regular buses. Vancouver has 2 layers on some routes but the big fail is that the transit planners separate the stops for the local route from the express route by blocks or by major intersections. Combining routes is really difficult, to the point where it must have been designed that way. If you wanted to transfer from express bus to local bus or vice versa it's basically impossible because those two buses stopping nose to tail can never happen.
Another opportunity not taken is that once you have a BRT-like service on a route, with few stops, that runs on a strict schedule, I think you should take the local service off of it's schedule and have it run as frequently as traffic and ridership allows. Instead of having a bunch of padding in the schedule and then having buses sitting idle at the terminus doing nothing they should keep moving as much as possible. If each driver gets even 2 more loops done in a shift that's a nice bump in frequency.
Layering modes is a big reason I talk about Paris a lot, that city does it exceptionally well!
@@RMTransit yeah, he we have the RER & transilien (and soon line 15 !!) for really fast travel (some lines have issues, like there is too much stops on line B & C inside Paris), metro for a more local layer but still fast, and then buses for local travel but metro is often very good, areas where buses are really needed they’re overcrowded all the time and they need to make more trams or metro lines, like there is some lines that I take they could easily be trams / cable-cars / metro line because they’re really really long, and there is too much people taking them
And trams are present in all layers
Outside Paris buses can be perfected, and we still don’t have any usable services for people with reduced mobility if we’re poor
The PAM is really really bad, not everyone can access it (I’m disabled but I can’t have it), you need to book it like at least the day before (same for most train lines, having a reduced mobility here sucks a lot) and if you don’t live in Paris region like you’re just here for medical reasons (a lot of people come to Paris because all doctors are here, especially if you have rare diseases) or tourism you don’t have access to it at all because it’s for locals only, and you have a lot of paperwork to do, and you can’t go that far away anyway
I would love to have a uber-style app to order special transit to go from the train station to my home when my train arrive at the station, and not need to book all my life 24 hours before and pray to keep getting access to it (or get it in a first place :’) )
I've been saying this for years about the L2 on Connecticut Ave here in DC (and pretty much all the other bus lines in the city-the L2 just happens to be the one right by me). The bus crawls because it stops pretty much every block. And it feels like every time you stop, you miss the light and have to wait through another light cycle at every street just to do the same thing over and over and over again. Easily 50% of the stops could be taken out, including the one right on my street. I would gladly walk a few blocks to not have to stop all the time on the bus.
I was walking to a bus stop yesterday near Springfield Mall and when I realized how long the bus would take, I decided to walk to the next stop. In the time the bus caught up to me, I passed about 4 stops. Having a stop at each block really is not necessary. What is necessary is bus shelters to shield passengers from the elements.
Toronto has a lot of stops that are literally across the intersection from each other. Even express stops. I assume it's because it's too difficult for a pedestrian to cross the enormous stroads. Ridiculous on many fronts.
One thing that’s super important as a transit supercharger is walkability. If you have to cross a giant stroad diagonally to get to your bus stop you’ve just added 5 very unpleasant minutes to your trip. The 10 minute walk = 800 meters approximation breaks down. I think that’s a big culprit for tight stop spacing.
If you had a true 15 minute neighbourhood you could get by with 1 rapid transit stop in the centre.
I hate how the bus In vancouver stop every 2 meter. Which is why rapid routes are so much more popular than the regular routes.They should take some notes
I have a slightly different theory about why bus stops in Europe are further apart has to do with the more advanced layouts of their metro networks. In North America, the average metro station has only one entrance, except maybe those in tourism areas and transfer zones. The average European metro station, even in less populated areas have entrances galore. In some cases, European metro stations are often interconnected with one another via magic carpet.
This discussion is mostly about bus stops, not Metro stops. And I'm not sure what you are saying is accurate; there are a lot of multi entrance stations on American subway systems. I will say providing multiple entrances is definitely a good way to enlarge a station's catchment zone and make it less necessary to build additional stops.
Yep! I think the oversimplification of 10 minute walk = 800 meters is where the difference lies. Crossing a stroad diagonally to then walk through a car park with no side walks and having a pleasant walk to a metro with multiple pedestrian entrances is a totally different 10 minute walk
@@jackmassey574 Underground walkways are a big deal for avoiding the hazards of the street. Subways solve the crime problem of pedestrian tunnels because the platform is always a major destination with lots of foot traffic. In many cities, a big function of buses is to help you cross some streets without dealing with traffic and weather.
Thanks for this one, Reece. It is something that practicing transit planners deal with on a daily basis ... there aren't that many of us that get to design rail lines. I don't know when North America and the rest of the world diverged, but I can tell you that part of the issue here has always been legacy -- the stops have just "always" been there (since streetcar days, anyway). Even as recently as the last generation, a lot of planners just assumed that stops should be 800 feet or so apart. I've met these people; they're smart people, but I strongly suspect the internet has increased awareness of international best practices. There's also been a growing body of research that on a local line, ridership is optimized at around quarter-mile (400m) stop spacing, as a general rule at least. Anyway thanks again -- as much as I love a good city explainer, I think these planning 101 videos of yours are in some ways your best and most important.
Stops should be closely spaced in any traditional transit+ walking city. 800ft may be "walkable", it is certainly not fun to walk. The major technological change of the 21st century is hyper portable micromobility. Now all transit can focus solely on high speed intercity functions, while micromobility takes care of the last mile.
Here's a trick: If you have reliable schedules for your busses, but they only mark the major stops as time points (not every stop), you can have all the stops in between those scheduled ones be 'optional', the bus only stops there if people are actually getting on or off. ... which then lets you have stops much closer together without causing problems... provided a 'stop' consists of little more than a sign on a prexisting pole and a bit of paint telling cars not to park in the stop space, anyway.
Of course, as usage goes up that becomes a bit less viable (not much benefit to being able to skip stops if you have to stop at all of them due to passengers waiting anyway).
@@FullLengthInterstates 800ft is a couple minutes walk, its going to not be a big issue for most riders
I suspect the biggest difference are that much of North America completely gutted its transit systems post-WWII with a massive focus on automobiles (and racism and other things). In many places, transit still has an awful reputation build up during this period.
As a result there is much more effort in pulling people away from cars and the first thing that will attract people is a convenient station.
Speed definitely plays a role in ridership, but the visible thing to get people onto it in the first place is access. You have to attract the person who parks 10 feet from their front door and 100 feet from the office entrance.
Most of Europe kept transit as a default travel option for everyone, rather than just something for kids and the lowest rings on the socio-economic ladder, and they haven't needed to attract people in the same way so you can focus more on efficiency to maintain your position rather than putting efforts into attracting new people who default to the competition.
@@88porpoise Interesting hypothesis
On MiWay route 66 in Mississauga/Brampton, at the north end there are way too many stops. In the space of a 2-3 stop area, there is something like 5 or 6. And on days when there is any modicum of traffic and slight delays in the time between buses, I find it can be faster to do the 25 minute walk over waiting for the bus and the time it takes to travel. And this is a heavily used route too. Bendys filled in less than a kilometer at peak.
Literally this.
When you're near or at the end of a line it makes more sense to find some other line that's a little out of the way and or just walk there or back because the typical route you should take takes so long stopping at every stop and light.
I recommend sharing this with your city councillor!
I guess it depends on if you're trying to run a serious transit line or just have a bus service for the poor and elderly to get to shops and work
I lived in suburban PA without a car for a year and took the bus to work. There was a cut out to go from the development to the bus stop in about 5 minutes. Bus came once an hour but it was fine for commuting. Then it turns out that cutout was private property and I got yelled at. So it took twice as long to walk to the stop. Then they doubled the frequency but cut tons of (flag only) stops. So I'd need to walk a mile without sidewalks to get to the bus. Luckily I was able to escape to Philly.
I'm sure I'm not the only one that suffered from the loss of these flag stops
People obsessed with "private property" who will yell at people for "trespassing" are usually NIMBY McMansioning-owning SUV drivers who are addicted to sensationalist news media and have an irrational fear of crime and homeless people. Just look at the suburbs of the San Francisco area...
i think too frequent stops are often a result of public transit beeing viewed in a narrow "household served" or "household not served" kind of way that doesn't take into account the quality of transit and just focuses on everyone beeing in reach of transit. by that metric frequent stops are better beacause in the statistics people's distance to the stop is smaller and therefore the only goal there was, creating a basic even if bad service for everyone, is served
What Reece commenting on is based on theory and depends on country, city and and local communities. In my country, bus stops are 'on request' for pick and drop off with a space of 400 to 500m apart but mainly 500m's. The only stops that are 'compulsory' which are a few, is for timetable 'checks' to make sure the bus is operating to its route schedule. Research has shown is stops more then than 500m apart, there is a reduction in people using public transport.
There's definitely some sort of golden ratio of frequency vs walking time between stops.
Great video! I've started taking the Bathurst streetcar over Spadina whenever possible because of fewer stops (although that's more for the difference nearside/farside stops and less so actual stations). Interesting articulation of the tradeoff in route speed vs. time spent getting to a stop - I feel like that's also why microtransit/DRT struggles to build ridership, as it theoretically adds infinite stops and becomes impractically slow as a result
DRT tried to at least do something when they removed quite a few stops on the Pulse 900 route but its still not enough
Microtransit detours are great when it's picking you up and a curse when it's picking everyone else up. Every new rider significantly slows down anyone already on the vehicle.
Simple model of picking up n passengers, then dropping them off in random order, means that on average there will be n-1 detours before you get off. Not terrible if n=2 and detours are 5 minutes, not so good if detours are 15, or if n=6. (5*5 = +25 minutes to your trip!)
In my country (and most of South America) all urban buses stop every 200 meters (if requested by a rider getting on or out the bus, if not they won't stop), you can imagine why everyone wants a car or a motorbike.
This is what london is doing with the new express bus superloop. I still think it should be combined with bus only lights though as it will still get stuck in traffic
A bus trip that crosses the city stopping every 200m is brutal. Definitely a "never again" experience.
In Denmark where I'm from, we often dont have the best track record with attempts to have fewer stops. In Aalborg for instance, when their BRT line was under construction, the city had several different proposals for how to reshape the city bus network going forward. One of them included having fewer lines with slightly wider stop spacing, in return for being more direct and fast, and allowing every bus line in the city to run every 7.5 minutes. However this was widely opposed for people having to walk too far, with most peoples tolerance level being closer to 300-400 meters, especially for a regular bus.
Meanwhile in Copenhagen when the 5A bus got sort of upgraded to the 5C BRT-lite line, there were plans to remove some stops but it was extremely widely opposed, mainly by people claiming that it would make the distances for those in wheelchairs or with mobility impairs too far for them to even reach the bus in the first place. The same excuse comes up when trying to talk of removing on street parking as they go in and scream that "The bus stops are too far away, 200 meters, we need a parking space for a car otherwise we cannot go anywhere.
In all of these cases they make it sound like limiting the number of stops and spacing them wider apart completely limits people from getting any kind of mobility at all, and therefore in their accusation argue that the increased speed wont matter cause the people most dependent on the buses wouldn't be able to access them to begin with.
Paratransit exists in several parts of Denmark now, but not within Copenhagen itself, where its argue its not needed with a max walk of 500 meters to any bus stop from any location in the Copenhagen municipality.
But that is not to say there are no cases of stop removals working here. Copenhagen is after all home to the S-bus network. A system of fast and frequent limited stop routes on radial and orbital corridors around the city and metropolitan area. These are very succesful but were also developed back in the 1990's. The city actually had even more S-bus lines in the past which were envisioned to be the backbone of bus transit in Copenhagen at the time. However several ones in the city core got replaced by a new separate network called the A-buses when the Copenhagen Metro opened. The A-buses ran even more frequently, up to every 2 minutes on some lines, but had the exact same stop spacing as regular routes (300-400 meters rather than say 500-700 meters), and replaced a bunch of both regular bus routes, and S-bus lines.
I sometimes wonder if the A-buses were the right decission for Copenhagen or if the S-buses should've been more prominent in the city center.
Philadelphia's busses stop at every single block, making every single bus journey take forever. I don't even mind walking a little extra distance if it means the bus is faster and bus stops are nicer because there's less bus stops to spend money on. It doesn't make a difference if I have to walk an extra block or two because the bus is just going to be late more often with it stopping at every single block. The best bus routes ironically are the ones run at night to replace the subway, which have much better spaced stops and predictably is a lot faster.
It occurred to me a while that trains/tram should have farther spaced stops because they accelerate and decelerate slowly. in Vancouver, Route 15 goes parallel to the Canada line so it can be used as a shuttle to the next station for those who live in between
In my city, 2/3 of all stops are skipped at night. In addition to the lower traffic volume and the blatant disregard of traffic rules by the bus drivers, this makes it possible to double the number of trips. Since there are rarely senior citizens on their way to the orthopedist at 3 a.m., but mostly drunk students who would otherwise take the bike or the car, this seems like a smart solution.
Buses and trams can REALLY go fast even with crossings as long as they get priority and don’t have to stop
I feel this so strongly about my local busses, Lothian busses in Edinburgh. They are pretty good overall but god damn are they super slow. Far too close together stops, often only one door for people getting on/off, congestion, lack of priority etc etc.
I think a lot of the reason why North American routes tend to have such close stop spacing comes from the mindset that the purpose of the bus is intended to be pure coverage, not to attract ridership. Thus the sole metric by which the bus system is judged is what % of homes and jobs are within X minutes of walking from a bus stop, with zero weight on frequency, span of service, ridership, or speed. And is coverage is 100% of the goal, then making the stops as close together as possible is the perfectly rational thing to do. Europe, on the other hand, is more focused on actually moving more people, so they design the service accordingly.
Chicago has some lines that have an express option. Always a bus that stops every 1/8 mile, but during rush hour those lines also run an express bus that only stops every half mile, lining up with the buses that run in the perpendicular direction. It's certainly an effective option for high-demand bus lines.
I'm never going to get used to younger people saying less instead of fewer for countable nouns.
The intro to this video was CRYING OUT for a joke about TTC's single point switches.
They are truly painful, but I can't make too many inside jokes!
Hypothesis: the difference between North America and Europe is in part cultural.
My walking distance to the nearest metro station is ca. 700m, and I consider myself well connected. 700m just isn't a significant distance to walk, and I don't need to cross streets on my route.
I know this approach isn't universal, because I used to do a research project in a rural area where I had to walk about 1 km from the hostel to the work site. And my hosts wouldn't let me! For them it was insane to walk that far, I absolutely had to ride a car with them. But here in Warsaw 1km is how far I had to walk from home to my grade school every morning as a kid, and it's considered a perfectly normal thing to do.
It doesn't mean people in some places are more "addicted to cars" or "walk-averse" than in others. The difference can be rational. In that rural area I mentioned, there's no such thing as a pedestrian crossing outside the centre of their only town (8 thousand residents and dropping). My route to school went along a very calm local road where I was never in danger of being run over. I can imagine circumstances like these can fossilize into hard habits over time.
Transit planners in my home town in Germany should watch this. The only transit in the northern part of my city are 2 tram lines, which, on top of running on the street, have a stop like every 300 m. This would be fine if there was another, faster mode of transit to get there, like an S-Bahn or a Subway, but there isn't (yet, they're working on a new S-Bahn branch). This makes it painfully slow to get there, when the distance isn't actually that far.
Duisburg?
@@cooltwittertag yup
I live in Nymburk, Czech republic, Europe, (15 000 people town), we have only regional buses here which all start their routes at the main train station (we have two stations in our town, because history...). We don't have any town only buses, nor any comprehensive plan for the bus network, just some general directions in which the bus needs to leave the town so it can continue to some other town or village, which makes the bus lines in our city pretty chaotic, unorganized and inefficient. All of them wind through the town in a way that slows them down and makes biking seem like flying. The problem is lack of any central plan and also adding stops in places where they don't make much sense. The line I used a lot when I was attending the high school just got a new stop in a coul de sac car dependent suburb adding whopping 1.4 km to the bus line, just to add that one stop. Hopefully when the new road connection (including a cycle track to the nearby elementary school) decoul de sacing this suburb will be finnished they will reroute the bus line to use it shortening it significantly, but at the cost of losing another two stops, which in my opinion could be served by another line sort of copying the current one with the same 30 minute interval but running in between the services of the current line. Half the service is better than none, for these lightly used stops, but in the general direction where the bus is going (train station - town centre - west high rise development and west suburbs) this solution will have 15 minute interval instead of the 30 minutes nowadays. Also it would be nice if the bus line was running at weekends and holidays, but that's a completely different story...
Yeah this is a real problem in LA. Venice blvd is a large street in west la, and there is one section of road, 5000 ft long with 6 stops. It's crazy! This is a super busy road with bus lanes, and a ton of traffic. Even with the bus lanes, they go slower than cars because there are just so many stops.
Here in Pittsburgh our buses stop literally almost every block! It's so annoying. If they removed every other stop things would move so much more quickly. It also pisses off cars behind us (not that I care all that much) because they're constantly stopping. But, we all know as soon as stops would be removed, someone would complain that their stop was removed and now they have to walk farther. So we suffer along with slow service. Ideally, if some stops were removed, my bus would get downtown in ten minutes instead of twenty.
I remember the 61C having too many stops in SqHill
@@PatGunnyeah it's like that for most bus lines. I take the 87 downtown from Highland Park because it's the quickest and most direct route. But it also doesn't run as frequently as others and virtually shuts down at 8 pm on weekends, which is ridiculous. The 71A used to be my bus for getting home on weekends from my job downtown, but now that line doesn't even go all the way downtown anymore since they're building a BRT line and have cut 4 buses from Oakland to Downtown until it's finished. So getting home at night from downtown on weekends is a friggin nightmare now. And even though they say it'll only take two yrs to build, I don't believe them. We all know how slow things work in this city 🙄
@@bradleyschmidt7190 I left Pittsburgh some years back (still missing it though). Now remembering being stranded by the bus system because I stayed out too late and needing to walk halfway across the city at 2am. Oof.
Unfortunately, Pittsburgh has too many elderly people, curvy roads, hills, bridges, and tunnels for such a solution to be effective in most of the area. Plus, when service runs infrequently, it has to stop everywhere. Port Authority is probably running 25-35% of the service it had in my childhood. Just cuts, cuts, and more cuts.
@@robertlunderwood I think it's worth fixing it even in Pittsburgh; faster transit helps all cities.
North Americans really don't like walking that much and in many places walking isn't that pleasant either. So stops are frequent so people can walk less.
Even in much of Europe, I would argue stops are often too close together. On normal bus routes in Berlin (no M or X suffix), one can often easily see the previous and next bus stops from a bus station. The tram actually stops so often (even the M trams) that I can actually pass them cycling, even though they have a significantly greater max speed. This is why I often do choose to cycle over taking public transport because it is often so much faster.
Ex. My commute is 40-50 minutes with public transport vs. 25-30 minutes cycling (including parking the bike). Just for completeness for those car drivers, even though I personally don't own a car, it would take 25-40 minutes, as long as the traffic isn't too heavy, which can happen.
On the MBTA, there are many stops, especially Green Line ones, that are less than 1000ft/0.3km apart. The MBTA has been removing some of them but there are stops still less than 500ft apart. The big joke for decades is that Boston Marathon runners are faster than the B branch, since it makes so many stops.
Looking forward to a video about London's new Superloop express bus loop.
The only way to manage this is through stealth. Step 1 is to introduce express services. Step 2 is to progressively decrease frequency on the all-stops service and increase frequency on the express.
heh
This is a big issue in New York. With the redesigns People are annoyed at losing their local bus stop and having to walk a little further. MTA said that they would consider this and create a balance, but many people aren’t happy
In New York, eliminating bus stops has been making the system much less accessible for seniors, those with mobility issues, and others who are unable to walk farther to catch the bus. Under the MTA's bus network redesigns (which is creating more transit deserts in New York's outer boroughs, many gaps between LOCAL stops are set to be 5-7 blocks apart instead of 2-3 blocks. As a transit planner, it is dangerous to assume that a) everyone who takes/relies on the buses is able-bodied and/or both willing and able to walk longer distances, and b) those who aren't willing and able to have other means of transportation available to them.
Yeah that was partly my thought as well, how well are people with disabilities able to access public transit? I have several times seen older people in wheelchairs or motorized scooters using well-designed bike lanes though, so maybe that helps.
@@mixolydia3309
It's a tradeoff. How much time is it acceptable to increase everybody else's travel times so that people with disabilities don't have to walk as far? For instance, is it worth increasing 20 people's commutes by 10-15 minutes each way so that one person with a disability has easier access? Often, those that say yes do so with an assumption that everybody has a car, so those that don't like it can just drive instead. But, that kind of attitude tends to relegate transit only for people with no other options and make for a not very good system.
@@ab-tf5fl The bus stop spacing in New York right now is between 800-1000 feet (243-305 meters), and lightly used bus stops are often skipped over anyway. In the redesign plans, that spacing increases to about 1100-1800 feet (335-549 meters), even for local routes/portions of routes. While that may not sound like much of an increase for an able-bodied person, it is A LOT for someone who has a mobility issue (especially in inclement weather). For many who don't live along the corridor (they can't just choose to live closer to it), these bus stop eliminations result in walks that could be much longer (over 700 meters or even a half mile). For someone with a mobility issue who walks more slowly, this makes their trip longer, eliminating any benefit that the MTA promised in the plans. The most vulnerable are hit the hardest, and from an equity standpoint, that is unacceptable.
New York’s stop spacing should be every 3-4 short blocks. That’s actually a suitable distance for people of all ages. The big example of this is the B82 bus route on Flatlands Avenue. Between Flatbush Avenue and Ralph Avenue, it only stops at Troy Avenue, Schnectady Avenue, Utica Avenue, 53rd Street/Avenue J, and 57th Street. Under the MTA redesign plan, all the stops on Flatlands Avenue between Utica Avenue and Ralph Avenue will be kept. The ones from Utica Avenue to Flatbush Avenue will be eliminated since the route will travel via Kings Hwy instead. This B82 stop spacing is one that should be emulated on every route in the city, though it is disappointing that a stop at Avenue K/Schnectady Avenue isn’t being added. I’m also disappointed that this stop spacing isn’t being emulated on the rest of Flatlands Avenue as well. Honestly, east of Ralph Avenue to the Rockaway Pkwy station, it should be stopping at 77th, 80th, 83rd, 87th, Remsen, 93rd, and 96th Street, rather then what they have planned for the route. It totally spaces things out for everyone.
And keep in mind this is coming some 5-6 years after some other stop readjustments were done on the route during the SBS implementation. This includes the elimination of the East 38th Street stop along Kings Hwy, which has been subject to complaints from residents, bus riders, and drivers. That stop has since been consolidated down the street to Flatbush Avenue.
@@jsn683 Is there any actual data on how many people can walk 3 block but not 5 blocks, or is this free-floating concern?
In Europe, the buses have more doors (minimum 3?) than North American buses. Also transit stops need to be cleared of snow windrows for the full length of the stop (snow windrows should be cleared at intersection corners and crosswalks).
The doors depend on the bus length and operator: The UK uses a lot of single-door busses mostly for fare collection reasons (i.e. enforcing) but is otherwise inefficient and the standard in the rest of Europe (AFAIK) is to use two doors at minium for regular busses + 1 for each articulation.
Unfortunately not everywhere in Europe!
In Germany most standard buses only have 2 doors and bendy buses only have 3 😢
In Augsburg, Munich and Ingolstadt (all of these are cities in Germany and cities I have used buses in), most solo buses have three doors and articulated buses have four.
Meanwhile, the norm in New Zealand seems to be 2 doors: front for boarding (and collecting fairs) and exiting in a limited number of circumstances (if the driver needs to lower the ramp for someone with a wheel chair, or someone sitting right up the front when no one is boarding at the stop) and rear (actually more like halfway down the bus most of the time, honestly) for exiting. Though I've not looked at the state of busses in other cities super recently, so some of them might be different.
@@nicolasblume1046It really depends where the busses are going. Busses in main cities have more doors than those in rural areas. If a bus takes an overland route, all passengers are supposed to be seated because of the higher travel speed. Hence public transport services are going for a bus option with more seats, sacrificing one or even two doors. As those busses have less total capacity compared with busses with standing spaces, the trade-off is o.k..
Was on the Q10 bus the other day and noticed that the second to last stop is really close to the last stop (at the Kew Gardens-Union Turnpike subway station). There is a rule that stops shouldn’t be too far apart unless there’s infrastructure or safety issues, something around the average of 750 feet apart. So maybe the last stop was too far away, and they had to add a stop, but it’s really strange seeing a stop almost on top of another stop.
These bus stops are designed by people who never get out of his cars and cannot imagine walking more than 100 meters.
If people usually go between the suburbs and the city center, some buses could only stop half of those stops in the suburbs and some other buses could stop at the remaining stops. That would halve the number of stop of each bus in the suburbs. The downside of course would be that the frequency would also be halved.
I've seen that done. But, it also comes with a second downside that lots of trips within and between suburbs become nearly unusable - instead of riding one frequent bus, you're forced to transfer between two infrequent buses, on top of a circuitous route of having to all all or most of the way into the city and back out again.
Here in Chicago, bus stops tend to be about 200 m apart, sometimes a few meters less or more depending on the street they run on and corresponding cross streets. We also have express busses and the "L" (metro). Some bus lines run parallel to the "L" so you have a choice of taking the method with less or more stops. There is, of course, room for improvement.
Hi Reece! I’m a huge fan of yours. In my hometown(Ciudad de Panamá) the recently open Metro is getting bigger and bigger. I think it will be a very interesting topic to explain.
Thanks for this excellent clip RM. At first I thought this was a fairly peripheral area, but it's actually a quite deep and interesting topic, that is central to the provision of effective transit.
I took the trouble to look at bus routes and stops in my own local government area (Liverpool, which is a city within the south west of the Greater Sydney). Apart from being local for me, it also has a diverse bus system as the area traverses from a high-rise central business district (CBD), through suburbs with detached houses and medium density), to outer suburban and finally semi-rural areas to its west. It is not an affluent area, so transit budgets are tight enough to force people to think pragmatically about how best to spend on it. I noticed the following:
- In Liverpool's central business district (CBD), transit is centred on a four platform Sydney Trains station (serving 3 lines, total of 8 services per hour, plus extra in peak times), sharing a common concourse with a large bus terminus and cab ranks. Nothing fancy, but quite functional. It serves as the focus for most bus services, but there are also stops in adjacent shopping areas as various services arrive/leave the CBD.
- A shoulder station at Warwick Farm is outside the CBD, next to a major highway and close to numerous high-rise residences. It acts as both a 'walk-to' and a 'park and ride' station (there's virtually no parking at the bus oriented main Liverpool station, so they complement each other). There are also a couple of bus stops nearby, but only serving one or two specific routes.
- Sydney has an integrated bus system, mostly provided by private operators under contract, and using the Opal card system. The state government was a major bus operator in the past, basically in areas that were originally served by trams. The Liverpool area has always be served by private bus operators. Most buses everywhere provide facilities for people with disabilities.
- Arterial bus routes out of Liverpool (i.e. having more than one route, 4 services per hour or better, but not a dedicated busway) mostly have stops with a shelter, seats and advertising. Stop distance varies between 200 and 500 metres (location often determined by local factors, with the shorter distances being more common). The shelters feature integrated advertising and are maintained by private companies. Websites of shelter advertising providers are very interesting, referring to them as 'street furniture', and having options from simple posters to tailored full electronic displays. Apparently some can be set up to provide 'real-time' public messaging, like warnings about heatwaves, bushfires or approaching storms.
- The numerous 'local' bus routes (serving specific suburbs) turn off those arterial routes at some point. They usually have shelters at major stops, but minor stops may now only be marked by a pole sign. Distances between stops are often in the 200 to 300m range, and seem to allow for most of the serviced residential areas to be within 500m. My own suburb's service (the 903) is not untypical; offering services about every 30min in the peak, hourly for most of the day and every two hours on Sundays. School bus services are also provided in the area.
- As you travel further west, the suburbs end and urban fringe and semi-rural areas predominate. At Luddenham, a small village at the far western end of the Liverpool local government area, bus services to a major centre provide only a morning and evening service each way. That may change, given Western Sydney International Airport is being constructed just east of Luddenham and will be served from day one with a frequent 3-4 car driverless mini-metro running north / south, and numerous bus connections. Liverpool Council have suggested electric buses (like the Brisbane "metro") along an extension of an existing dedicated busway be used as their direct east-west airport connection.
- While not lavish, the system does seem to have been given some thought. In most places it is possible to live without a car, albeit not as conveniently in the more sparsely populated areas.
- It also struck me that Greater Sydney has some unique features connected with the topic, and driven by its relatively low population density. For example, in the 1920s, Sydney Trains and Harbour Bridge designer J Bradfield (I like to tell Brits that "Brunel is sort of a British equivalent to Bradfield") decided not to go with a metro/tube, but a single deck suburban rail system, with routes that converged in the Central Business District to provide 'metro-like' frequencies. The decision to have a harbour bridge rather than a tunnel meant it would be a shallow underground subway system (not a deep tube system) in the CBD. The much later decision to make it 'double-deck' was a factor in making it slower (at least 10% on most routes) and more like a dedicated RER.
- The Sydney Metro System is about to complement that in reverse; provide true metro operations under much of 'Harbour Sydney', that become frequent suburban rail services when out into the mid-suburbs. It will undoubtedly stimulate higher density development along its suburban corridors. Meanwhile the Western Sydney Airport 'Mini-Metro' is the first really true non-radial line in greater Sydney, designed as much or more to 'serve the more populated west, rather than connect with traditional Harbour Sydney. Although it is still under construction it has already stimulated significant development along the northern part of its route.
- It all provides even more depth for the 'rabbit hole' of whether types of rail system should be defined more by their geo-political intent, strategic purpose, distance between stations, rolling stock design, number of decks, or what?
Great video on a topic I had not considered before.
TIL that in North America buses stop every 100 meters or so.
When you started this video I was thinking about my city's plans to add 2-3 train stops within the city limits for local commuter trains, each of which would be barely a kilometer apart, which I think is a great improvement to the system. Turns out your video is about something else entirely. Which is great. As per usual with your videos I get to learn a lot. Not just about transit with all its considerations, but about how to present what I already sort of knew intuitively as a concise and clear argument for my advocacy. You're doing great work as usual :)
When I lived in Toronto I couldn't believe how close a lot of the bus stops are. Often 2 on the same block or even across the street from each other serving the same routes!
I nearly yelled “Hell Yeah” as I was listening to this. My main problem with my public transit option here in Ottawa is that it takes me an hour and a half on OC Transpo to get downtown when I can drive there in under 30 minutes, during rush hour. As a single parent with two jobs, I cannot make that 2 extra hours of commuting time trade-off. And given the quality of OC Transpo management, that’s probably the permanent situation.
I agree! Up until August 2022, I lived in a community in Nepean (near Baseline and Greenbank). I used to work as a temporary help worker in departments such as Correctional Services, Department of Justice, and many others that have offices downtown, Between seventy and eighty percent of the time I had absolutely no problems with the buses; the rest of the time (especially in the winter) the buses were unpredictable. It’s important to note that I did not have a smartphone during most of my employment (1990s and into the 2000s) which meant that I couldn’t check arrival times online. I shudder at what all this LRT work means in terms of getting people to where they need to go on time. I recently read that OC Transpo is cutting more routes and changing some - this will make current users very upset!
I have always said this exact thing about the Portland Oregon transit system. MAX stops are super close together, especially out in the suburbs such as Gresham. Comparing it to Washington DC, it's ridiculous. It's about 5-13 stops to get from downtown DC to the suburbs in any direction, in Portland you have closer to 20 stops before you find suburbs. The systems are incredibly different, but I don't see myself commuting into Portland by tram when it takes an hour and a half versus a 40 minute metro or so in DC.
How is transport priority not taken into account? If public transit gets priority at crossings, a journey would be faster anyway.
Some kind of fractured politics and no cooperation. There is a spot here where 2 westbound lanes with parking widens to 3 lanes before it merges into another road narrowing down again to 2 lanes. With everyone merging it all becomes backlogged and transit is mixed up in all of that so it's faster to get out and walk. There is ample space to create a short bus lane bypass but the city doesn't do anything about it and the transit planners have never asked or can't convince them.
This bottleneck adds up to 15-20 minutes to the route at rush hour so they just add that time to the schedule for every loop, every time of the day or night, cutting down frequency on the entire route just so a few cars can pull into a new lane and then merge right back out of it again. 1 more block of bus lane and this could be solved. I wish I knew exactly how or why some cities effectively solve these little problems immediately while others let them go on for decades.
@@fallenshallrise I’m not just talking about specific lanes for buses. But also, for example, systems that can detect buses at intersections. If a bus is detected, that whole lane gets priority. If you want to make a comparison to Europe, like Reece does, you need those detection systems, they’re used all the time here and make sure you travel quickly on transit
Further stops goes against the idea of trams and busses being walking accelerators.
Great video. It would be nice to see a similar analysis but for systems with dedicated lanes. I guess those could afford more stops than the regular ones.
On the other hand, the dedicated lane means the bus can have a higher practical top speed, which means you lose more time by having frequent stops... Bus lane + frequent stops is like doing one thing to increase speed and then another to decrease it.
The year before I started going to college and having to take the city bus, they took out the bus stop right at the bottom of our hill (20s sprint) and the next closest stop after that was a whole mile away at the grocery store
I drive for Edmonton Transit and one big thing you missed is weather related stops. Here we usually have bus stops every 2 blocks and every 4 or so on industrial areas. One big reason is winter weather. We see as low as -60° Celsius at times. Walking the extra 2 blocks isn't ideal. They had done a survey recently, and people agreed that walking up to 7 blocks was doable, but the problem was that the survey was done during summer and once winter came back around that changed real quick.
My city has a public transit system that was created before private automobiles were in widespread use, but after the invention of city grids and rail transpottation. At its peak, something like 50 square miles of city were covered by a public transit system where every .2mi or 320m was an intersection with public transit vehicles going in every cardinal (N/E/S/W) direction.
When my city last year decided to remove half the stops in downtown, it decreased the ridership and only saved a few minutes due to the extra car traffic as fewer were willing to walk the extra 2 city blocks in hot, cold, or rainy weather for the same price as before the change.
I live without a car in the center of a large North American city. I often use the bus for my commute. I have 3 different bus routes within 2 blocks of my home. The route I use most often has two different stops, each about a block from my front door.
The street this route is on is starting a massive redesign, removing car lanes and parking and adding dedicated bus lanes, bikeways, and widening sidewalks. It will also remove one of my close bus stops. I can't wait ... the street will be much better for walking, biking and transit. My walk to the bus stop will be slightly longer (100 meters?), but the stop will be nicer.
It's important to note that every bus stop must be maintained by the transit company. In places where the stop is only a sign on a lamppost, this is minor, but both my stops have lights, a shelter with a bench, and trash cans. Someone has to pick up trash and empty those cans, clean graffiti, replace burned out lights ... the costs add up. I'd rather they spent the money on increasing bus frequency.
Thank you! I live in portland metro suburbs and many of our stops are way too redundant. It takes me well over peak rush hour time to get to the airport from my house. I can bike to work in less than half the time it takes to get their by bus. Driving takes a quarter of the time. It needs to be faster.
Where I grew up in North London, the local route to the borough centre has three stops within about 400 metres on the way out home. I get off at the first one if the bell goes, the second if not.
No-one ever gets on at either because the 3rd stop has a second route that merges onto the road just before it and both buses go onto the local shops so everyone goes there to get the first service.
(The other bus also has a stop just at the merging junction that almost no one uses for the exact same reason).
It always feels insane but it exists because the whole section of the forst route used to be hail-and-ride. They added stop 1 for spacing then realised that the 2nd bus had the stop before the junction and decided to add the 2nd stop to mirror it and balance the stop before the hail-and-ride on the other side (before the junction splits the routes) and then realised the 3rd stop was whet everyone acrually wanted to have. 😅
Thank you for for adding dedicated close captioning, all yt vudeos should have this
My bus network recently changed so there's no easy way to move between my home and my work (basically turned from a 15 minute bus ride to a 15 minute bus ride and either a 30 minute walk or wait 25 minutes and get a 5 minute bus ride) so I bought a bike and now I cycle to work instead. Actually best thing I've ever done, more autonomy and cycling is so fun.
I mostly agree with you, except for the part about competing with bikes. Riding a bike is better for your health ( walking) so getting people to ride bikes instead of taking public transport is actually a good thing IMO.
Though this isn't really a "stop-spacing" issue, it does relate to how far people have to walk. One of the bus-depots shown in your video, needs to fence off a 2 meter wide (even 1.5 meters might be enough) right-of-way along ~71 meters of one corner of the lot. Because otherwise the Fraser River trail (between the Vancouver Transit center & the Fraser river) is a dead-end, blocked by what must either be private-property or Musquem land (probably Musquem land). There is a fence all around this land, that has "no trespassing" signs on it, but the fences have holes cut in them, that are always cut open again soon after they are repaired or otherwise blocked. The trail itself is only 330 meters long, but without the holes cut in the fences, it would be 1.4 kilometers to walk all the way around to the other side, and about 240 meters of that is right next to a freeway. I doubt it would cost Translink (or Coast Mtn Bus co, or the city of Vancouver) much more than $10,000 to plant enough poles to build ~71 meters of fence, and move one gate. That gate would have to be narrowed by 2 meters (or 1.5 m), but it looks wide enough to loose that & still be functional, and it also looks like it's never used anyway. (the buses all use the entrance on the other side of the lot, next to the current Fraser river trail entrance).
Interesting regarding stop spacing in the US vs Europe. I took a look at the lines that go outside my house, and indeed, they are about 350 meters apart.
I remember there was a stop literally 50 feet either side from the intersection, which means that a lot of times i'll look at the stops and go to the stop where theres a crowd (dont want two stops when one is fine), they are so close together.
Really good overview of the issue, we're looking at adding bus service to our city and this is helpful.
There are some routes in San Francisco that have WAY too many stops. I cannot tell you how painful it is to be on a bus that stops every 1 block to let like 1 or 2 people on. Some routes could easily drop like 3/4 of its stops and the time savings would be huge.
agreed on your last point: the main thing that adds time to my transit is waiting for vehicles or connections. if the bus is infrequent, i want the stop close to my house so i can do most of the waiting at my house if there is high variability. but if the bus is frequent or very regular, i dont mind walking farther b/c the uncertainty around missing the bus or waiting ages for the bus is not there.
The worst is a system where i walk a long distance to a stop or a bus and it is so slow i don't know which is the most efficient stop.
Europe and most other countries can make riders walk longer distances, because fewer people can afford to drive so the people who lose their front door stops just live with it. Paradoxically European transit is more focused on benefitting the majority, while American transit is often explicitly implemented as welfare with a bias toward the vulnerable at a cost to the commons.
Marco Chitti says he made 300m radius circles, but I tried replicating this for my hometown and found out he actually used 150m radius, 300m diameter circles, possibly on accident. This really changes the picture because suddenly stops especially in the US are often in the circles around the stops next to them on a line
One of the main complaints pointed at the BRT we are building in my city is the fact they are reducing the number of stops
Like rn there's stops that are 50-100 meters apart on the corridor (not everywhere but a lot of places)
I actually have lived around the GTA my whole life, and one of my favourite transport tools to have while using public transit is my good ol longboard. Sometimes, if the stops are spaced close together or they're along a downhill route, I'll usually just ride my board and get to my next transfer faster than if the bus were to show up, if not as soon as it would've.
Hey, are you going to do a Video on Frankfurt at some point?
One interesting option for buses is having stops spaced closer further out of town (where the bus doesn't always stop) and spaced further apart closer into town (where the bus probably will stop at every bus stop).
It's like E Train in NYC. You can ride express E Train (Jamaica Center in Queens to Lower Manhattan) if you happen to be in NYC between M-F. If you happen to be either on Saturday or Sunday, the E Train will stop at every station along that same line. Adding express service along the line is really good option for those who travels long distances.
My situation: Orange County, California. NO light rail systems exists. One tram is being built. The rest is all buses. To get from my house to my work in public transit, I have to first walk 10 minutes to the nearest bus stop. Then get on to no less than 3 buses to get to my office, with a 5 minute walk at the end, and two waiting times of around 10 minutes each in between the lines. In total, it takes me 2 hours - yes that is NOT a typo - to get from my house to my work. The distance is about 12 miles (or 19km).
By car.... if there is no traffic whatsoever it takes me 20 minutes from my dry garage to the parking garage of my office. If there is regular morning commute traffic, it takes me 30 minutes. If the traffic is absolutely horrendous and there are accidents and bad weather...... I still get between A and B, whether it is to or from the office, in about 45 minutes.
No amount of fixing the system, not even a direct bus route, would change my stance on taking the car to work. This county just is HORRIBLE when it comes to transit. I basically moved from one of the most transit friendly countries (Netherlands) to an area of the USA where it is at its worst. Los Angeles is slowly improving, and I like what I see.... but Orange County..... nope, it will remain "car heaven" for decades to come.
"No amount of fixing the system"
What about bus lanes so buses zipped past congested traffic?
Honestly, American stop spacing is weird. On one hand, regional railways tend to have huge distances even in built-up areas (which can be justified because of limited track capacity) but on the other hand, busses and the occasional trams have a stop every (second) block with no option in-between.
The 22 in vancouver has two stops on the same block!! I took it this morning
Shout out for the Thom Yorke sweater! 👌
Express bus services often sounds good on the first glance but is not a solution for every corridor / city. Especially in smaller cities there is not enough potential ridership to allow for a second line to be placed in a corridor, or you have to consider if there is, if it’s not better to increase the interval (e.g. from a 30- to 15-minute interval) than to add a second line with a limited stop pattern. Often the distances in smaller cities even so not outweigh the few minutes really saved by an express service in opposite to a well-balanced stop- and bus-priority-plan for a corridor. In my opinion it is ok to reorganize corridors including improving stop patterns. But it’s not enough to draw a 300- or 600-meter circle on a map (the 800 meters are quite ambitious when you return from grocery shopping imo), but you should also consider the real pedestrian connections (thank you Reece for explaining this in an example) and to place stops as close as possible to points of interest - and to make an all-in-one concept with zoning, allowing spaces for grocery stores and other shopping facilities especially at public transit hubs. Zurich made good experiences with this way of zoning.
we can and should have both where/when possible. slower, denser stops for those who are willing to wait a little longer to walk less, and faster express-er services for making longer trips faster. i can only walk faster than the streetcar on a good leg day, if its a bad leg day then my max walking speed drops below that of congested traffic and it's better to just get on and be able to sit down
Excellent point! On a larger scale I wish California would consider this when designing their high speed railway.