I’m just wondering how transit bus numbers/routes are assigned. Where I live there is numbers 1,2,3,4 but not 5, then 6,7, no 8, then 9,10, no 11 etc etc. So why do they leave out some numbers are not others? Is there a system to this? Or maybe the guy in charge asks his three-year-old daughter to pick a random number? heh
Probably the missing numbers are routes no longer being serviced. It’s only confusing to renumber everything if you drop one route, so you just don’t use the number.
Could be, but then why are there so many high number routes? I’m sure there were not that many routes discontinued. Here, the numbers go up to 87, and then it jumps to 159.
Some buses use the numbers only system; others use numbers + Alpha. Routes are routinely preconfigured and assigned numbers.
Maybe it works like the Interstate Hwy. system. Route 15 goes the most direct route through an area but Route 159 goes up and down all the streets of that same area. So you’d get to the neighborhood on #15 and then transfer to #159 to get closer to where you want to go.
Just speculation though. I know nothing about how bus routes work and am only vaguely familiar with the routes near my house.
I just assumed it was MrBusGuy…
Your local transit agency decides what numbers to use. Where do you live?
preconfigured how though? if it’s different everywhere, it must have something to do with the specific routes themselves. like here the #14 turns into the #61. It makes sense because it’s the longest route in the city so they need to split it in half, but how do the numbers 14 and 61 relate at all?
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Spomething I noticed when I was in Honolulu. The bus number (not the route number but the number of the bus) was the license plate of the bus.
Painted on the back of the bus #80
License plate BUS 80
Boy I bet that makes keeping track of which bus is which for maintence and whatever easy.
Where I live, some route numbers go back well over a century, representing the old tram routes. Others are spurious creations. However, new significant routes are few and far between, and get given memorable numbers (66 and 88, for example). Minor routes take what’s given. Some extremely minor routes seem to always be given numbers over 150.
In Toronto, the bus and streetcar (tram) routes have widely-varying numbers, and sometimes nuumbers will be re-used.
There are a few sets with common characteristics… regular bus route numbers are between 1 and 299 (with gaps; also, numbers in the 190s are express routes). There are a few very local ‘community’ routes with numbers in the 400s, night buses and streetcars are in the 300s, streetcar routes are in the 500s, etc.
In the suburban city of Mississauga, regular bus route numbers are between 1 and 99. Express routes are in the 200s.
What GorillaMan said, I suspect. The original bus system is probably fairly old. At some time in history, the bus company either had routes with the missing numbers or had some sounded-good-at-the-time reason why they didn’t want to use those numbers.
Time passes, and the original routes get replaced with them new-fangled horseless carriages (which need to make wider turns, maybe), they close Hickory Street, the neighborhoods shift a little, whatever. The bus company decides to cancel the original routes, but doesn’t want to confuse anyone who thinks that route 1 still goes by the veteran’s hospital, so they retire the number.
Probably no more confusing than the system used to assign sports jersey numbers (and that would be another GQ thread).