alt Hacker NewsThere 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.
Replies
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.
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.
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.