There are simulators for this, and of course there's data from places that have actually done it.

In Dublin we have a bit of a mixture of newish bus routes which largely have a sensible number of stops, and ancient routes (the oldest evolved out of tram routes laid out in the 1870s), which tend to have a stupidly high number of stops, because once you put one in it's very contentious to remove it. The super-regular stop routes are _so slow_.

The difference between the SF 38 and the 38R which stops 1/3rd as much is 1/4th of the travel time in <5 miles.

That's an interesting point.

I'm also curious how bus stops interact with timed lights. Presumably each time the bus stops, it gets kicked back to the next cycle of green lights (which might be a low-single-digit minute delay).

Hopefully there's a traffic engineer in the audience who can give the real answers.

> However we'd have to see if that's truly the case, as cities have red lights and traffic, so the bus stops anyway.

Two problems - for one, riders entering and exiting takes time, especially if the public transit scheme says you can only enter at the front and have to show/buy tickets at the driver, and the other problem is that in most areas, buses cannot request a green light, so with a loop time of 1-2 minutes (quite common in German cities on busy roads) you may easily lose 2-3 minutes in the worst case just from a mismatch of departure with the light being green.

And over the course of a few stops, that lost time can add up quickly.

Imagine stopping at the bus stop and then immediately stopping at red light