I am not familiar with the bus system in the US but I imagine that it is pretty similar to that of the UK.
Apparently, there are professors who have spent a lifetime trying to work out ways in which to make the buses run on time.
The majority of buses run to a schedule that is displayed by each bus stop. Why don’t they abolish this system and just have buses leaving the depot at fixed time intervals. The drivers should know what time that they are meant to arrive at each stop and can adjust their time accordingly if they arrive too early by simply waiting. If the traffic is bad and they run behind schedule, surely the best method of keeping an even distance between the buses would be to tell the drivers that if they see another bus with the same number ahead, that they should wait at the next bus stop for a fixed period of time. That way, you could avoid the most maddening aspect of the public transport system by not having to see THREE or FOUR buses of the SAME number turning up at once.
I imagine that most people would agree that they don’t really care exactly what time the bus turns up just as long as it does so within a given period of time after you have arrived at the stop. Furthermore, people would probably not mind if their journey took a little longer if they knew that they would only have to wait for this period of time.
I presume that there is some flaw to this argument but I can’t quite see what it is. Any explanations?
Airlines and passenger trains here in the States have all kinds of tricks for defining how they “leave on time”. You might sit on the tarmack (sp?) or in the rail yard, but you DID leave on time. {And if that don’t work, we’ll just fudge the stats!}
Busses have to contend with rush hour traffic - assuming that term is “global” for the Western world. So, it’s harder to run on-schedule. You’d think that would have been built into the schedule, but we have to make the schedule look its best to maintain ridership! But, I’m sure there are tricks used there, too, to proclaim the busses run “on-schedule”!
First, I presume the OP is asking ONLY about rush hour, when the buses are very close to each other. In the off hours, where the bus runs every 15 minutes or so, I sure don’t want to run to the bus stop, only to have to wait 14 more minutes. Even if the bus will be late, it is good to at least have a schedule to aim for.
Second, NYC does work as suggested, I think. Most of the day specific times are mentioned in the schedule, but for rush hour it will say “every 2-3 minutes” or “every 5-6 minutes”, or whatever.
But nobody really cares whether buses run on schedule, just as they don’t care whether the tube or subway runs to a timetable. You arrive at a subway and expect a train to be there within say, 5 minutes. You know that when one train is at a stop, the one behind it has to wait until the one in front has moved. That way you get an even distribution of trains throughout the system instead of them moving by peristalsis. As it is the buses don’t run according to their own schedules anyway so why not abolish the whole thing?
The local bus system in Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, is the best I’ve ever encountered and/or used.
Each bus stop has a unique four digit code printed in large letters on the bus stop sign. These numbers are the last four digits of the phone number to call for that stop (the whole system uses the same first three digits of the phone number). When you call the number of “your stop”, an automated voice comes on and tells you which route(s) stop there, and the number of minutes before the next bus (per route) arrives.
It’s almost scary how accurate the thing is. “The number … seven … bus will arrive in … three … minutes.”
And they aren’t lying, it really is there in three minutes, and you will miss it if you are not.
Ever been to Singapore? The busses are invariably always on time. Wanna know how they do it? The driver yells at you if you’re too slow getting on/off the bus, then drives like a bat out of hell in crowded streets. I swear the drivers must get bonus $$ for on-time performance…
One reason buses need to run on fixed schedules is so people can (at least try to) make connections between different bus lines. This is especially important when some of the buses run as infrequently as once an hour.
The reason they never run on time is that the scheduled arrival time for a bus is a special kind of number called a “recipriversexcluson”, defined by Douglas Adams in Life, the Universe, and Everything as:
So if the bus is supposed to arrive at 8:14a, it may arrive at 8:12 or 8:15, but 8:14 is the one moment in time when it absolutely will not arrive.
