Empty Buses Are Okay | The Power of Frequent Transit
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- čas přidán 18. 07. 2022
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Hi, my name's Reece. I'm a passionate Creator, Transportation Planner, and Software Developer, interested in rapid transportation all around my home base of Toronto, Canada, as well as the whole world!
My Substack article on night transit: reecemartin.substack.com/p/we-dramatically-undervalue-night
😀 😃 🙂 👍
One of the stringest points you make is that people who are most reliant on transit are often the people who least have the opportunity to work 9-5, whether they night shift, over night maintenance, or working multiple jobs. Not only is it an equality of access issue but its a built in user base.
I see you mentioned on demand service, I would like to hear your broader opinion on that.
I think you might want to reword this "I really think it’s a missed opportunity to run Rapidbus Lines (at least the well-used ones) 24 hours a day."
Quote from link:
> In the Toronto region, there’s even some service now in Durham, Mississauga, and on GO!
Example: GO Buses #34 and #40 stopping at the airport - they have runs that start in the 2 am hour from their respective terminals.
Edit to clarify where quote is from
Over here, Night buses are usually advertised to reduce young drivers running into trees (or other people) under the influence. But then they get used by more people, and services get slowly expanded.
In this city, city night buses (cutely named N80 to N89, which works even better in German) have become regular night transit, and are also used on weekends and holidays. Turns out this works better than just more spacing between buses, as you can also reduce lines and thus the total number of buses and drivers in those times. I think the region night buses, though, are still weekend evenings only.
@@KaiHenningsen Do you have any issues with other riders being upset or feeling unsafe due to the drunk crew? I know thats a common complaint here; that people are afraimd of the bus and having people under the influence doesn't help.
(Not that I don't support putting drunk people on public transit)
unfortunately, people see poor transit services as a reason to get rid of them, rather than a reason to invest and improve services.
Which is funny since they want to fix broken roads…
And it doesn’t take a lot of bus riders to make them better than cars both economically and environmentally.
@@VictorECaplon and abandoned buildings...
Well we have to get around that, there is a climate crisis to address!
@@RMTransit of course convincing people about climate issues is another issue in and of itself
Nobody asks "Why are they driving these cars that only have one of the 5 seats occupied?"
We shouldn't count by seat. We should count by land area occupied by the vehicle or the fuel used. Oh and even if the total sizes are the same, one bigger vehicle is more efficient in traffic flow than two smaller vehicle, because of latency in driver reaction time.
Since a bus is on average 2 to 3 cars long, any bus with 3 passengers or above is already on par with car in traffic flow efficiency. A bus with >15 passengers win even the best possible car ride-sharing.
If the passenger count is really low, there is still minibus, which is shorter than 2 cars.
Yep, but they should!
@@billyswong I think counting by pollution is more fair. If a bus has 2 passengers, it's probably more efficient than car traffic
@@Hannwes Pollution matters, but could be solved by the transition to hydrogen-electric and battery-electric cars. Space-inefficiency would continue to be an issue though, which is why promoting public transport and cycling and getting people out of their cars is still relevant even if you take pollution out of the equation.
@Blake Belladonna Those are not even close to the numbers for swedish busses. But places are different I guess.
When I hear people in my city say, “I’ve never seen anyone riding a bus” what I really hear is, “I’ve never been to the side of town where people poorer than me live.”
This made me think of a statistic of how people with access to good public transit are less likely to be in poverty and the fact is if someone cant drive in a lot of places they are screwed....
A sign of a good place to live is that the rich use the bus.
Agreed, and it can also translate to "I've never been on a bus", which might just be the best place to observe people riding a bus.
@@sandal_thong8631 It's because what they really want is for poor people to stay poor and suffer.
@@aloysiusdevadanderabercrombie8 just keep assuming the worst of people.
In Houston, they built a lovely BRT line a few years ago through the dense and booming and wealthy but also very car-oriented neighborhood of Uptown, from a little south of the Galleria mall up to I-10, covering a distance of about 4 miles.
To the shock and dismay of the project's original backers and seemingly every local reporter, and to the utter expectation of people who actually understand and/or use public transit, the route has very low ridership.
Why? Because the line was built with ZERO connections to the other lines, and connects one end of a wealthy district to the other end of the same wealthy district, which district's lower-income workers commuted either by car or via the onstreet bus network that actually reaches into places where people who aren't rich can afford to live.
Now, Houston Metro is fielding public comment about the University BRT line that would run 25 miles, directly serve several different job centers (including, as the name suggests, several colleges and universities) AND many low and mixed income catchment areas, AND connect the existing BRT line as well as all three LRT lines.
Plus it will run parallel to (while providing better service than) three of the five most (currently) heavily used local bus routes in the city.
But, according to people at these meetings, it would be a total waste of money to build it because "nobody even rides the BRT line we already built!"
People are stupid and I hate everything.
remind me to never move to Houston
Can't wait for 20 years later when people in Philly will be pushing for the Boulevard Subway, and people at meetings will say "that's a waste of money, we just finished building KOP Rail and look how low the ridership on that was". I fucking hate US transit agencies so fucking much.
Not great to hear, but at least the issues with the first BRT are well understood!
@@blackman7437 KOP = King of Prussia? The only reason people of my generation knows that KoP exists as a place is that it is listed in our old Commodore Computer literature as the HQ location.
Houston, please. 😂
Re bunching, in Paris, a less crowded bus will often overtake a crowded one. Drivers will coordinate with each other on the radio and inform central dispatch at the same time. It's a very common maneuver.
Et du coup ils se coordonnent pour faire quoi ? Pour que ça n'arrive pas ? Pour faire gagner du temps au premier bus ?
@@eldarr0uge482 Pour organiser le dépassement si le couloir de bus est protégé, par ex. Le bus plein se décalera sur la droite à la prochaine intersection.
This seems ok, but then you could end up in a scenario of the second bus catching up!
@@RMTransit What's the problem with that? Presumably that would help equalize the passengers load and speed.
In Amsterdam, when buses bunch up, the first bus will skip stops (as long as no one wants to get off there) even when there are passengers waiting, so that the second bus can pick up the passengers at that stop instead. Doing this the first bus becomes a sort of express service and slowly builds up distance to the second bus again.
I believe that having as few as 3 people on bus is an improvement over them driving. That's based on the fuel and road space needed for 3 cars.
A great point!
Of the goverment paus for public transport thats thru but if its like in my country all paid by the people on the bus then that route is a löss and Will be cancelt next year when the new bus routes are made
And those 3 people will be having a better experience than a crowded bus - or a car for that matter, since they can actually use their time productively, which is impossible in either of the previous 2 scenarios.
> And those 3 people will be having a better experience than a crowded bus - or a car for that matter
Yeah, spot on! I think we wheeled mobility aid users are exempt if the bus becomes crowded while we are inside - since we have dedicated spots. If the bus is already full and we want on, then tough.
Did you know buses average 3 miles per gallon; whereas cars average 24 miles per gallon?
Look at a night bus/train... At least half of these people would be driving home drunk if there hadn't been a bus.
Indeed, night transit brings massive social benefits - though it’s not only for people drinking, a lot of essential workers work unusual hours
The argument of bus/train run empty can be countered by:
Then why, a corperate like McDonalds run empty during in-between time yet you expect them to open their door? Aren't corporates are less mercy on the idea of running empty business?
The issue is people feel they lose money on the bus which is publicly funded. Most North Americans (at least on the wealthy end) see themselves as a driver, so that spending is a low priority because they fail to understand how traffic works.
Yep it’s another good case, it’s not worth the negative perception of closing your doors at all but the busiest times, and you also start to lose people at shoulders of busy periods.
Exactly. I have a shop and 90% of my revenue came from the period from 11-1230hs and 18-20hs but if I close the rest of the time people would think I'm out of business
@@federicomarintuc I 100% support frequent all day transit, but I think there may be a difference between this and your comparison depending on how labour heavy your business is, and how well you can add staff for peak periods while using low periods for administrative work.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 I don't know how it is where you live, but in every city I have lived, buses are more frequent during rush hour (which depends on the line), and less frequent when there is less demand. There will still be empty or quasi empty buses at some times, because you don't want the frequency to get too bad (or even non-existant, for instance on Sundays or on the night buses).
So there is more staff working during the peak periods, and less during the low periods. Of course, drivers don't use them to do administrative work while driving (they might use the longer waiting times at the major stops to recharge if their bus is electric), but apart from that, the situation is pretty similar.
Thank you for coming to the defense of buses yet again. A lot of "Transit advocates" turn thier nose up and say "it's not 100% efficient 'cause rails so buses aren't worth talking about". But they are the back bone of our transit and the most effective way for use to expand service and grow ridership, and we have to embrace them.
Buses are perfect for introducing new service quickly. Yes rail on it's own right of way is better but only once an established ridership is created. Before that, buses are needed. They are the vanguard of public transit.
@@kiefershanks4172 "The Vanguard of Public Transit". I'm using that.
Buses are super important and I’ve easily spent more than half my time on transit on one!
But bus service, alas, often sucks. I know Reese loves buses, and there's good reason for that, but there are far too many spaces in TO where you're consigned to waiting for a 'every half hour' bus route that's so out of schedule that the bus arrives 15 or more minutes late. Smaller, more transit-allergic places (like Saskatoon) have bus services that regularly run once EVERY HOUR, making a trip that would take 15 minutes by car 2 or 3 hours, and ensuring that nobody takes the bus unless they absolutely have to.
In my neck of the woods (Western Europe), the rationale for introducing rail services to new areas mostly revolves around ridership numbers. As in are the (expected/potential) user numbers high enough such that the larger ‘vessel sizes’ of rail can filled to sufficient degree to be ‘profitable enough’ (they are usually subsidised, so it more like profitable after the subsidy is applied).
Of course, in particular when it comes to extending existing lines, removing one transfer adds to attractiveness (as does speed and comfort of rail) which affects potential ridership but can also be a political goal on its own.
One little point: there are times when most passengers travel in one direction, e.g. from home to work. The buses have to travel back to the houses, but there are fewer people wanting to make that journey at that time. So, full buses going in to town in trhe morning, full buses going out of town in the afternoon, with the less full buses going in the opposite direction ready to do the next busy journey.
That's exactly what happens with the trains in my city
There're 1-2 buses in my country that luckily run from a train station in a suburb's town centre to another residential neighbourhood further out that's beside an industrial estate. So traffic in both directions would be more even e.g. in the morning some commuters travel from the neighbourhood to the station to catch a train to work, while those living elsewhere may arrive at the station & use the same buses in the other direction to commute to the industrial estate
This is one circumstance under which empty buses are okay. Ridership suffers when transit runs less frequently than a certain threshold, so given that, how frequently must transit run at a minimum. An idea is to first focus on that minimum frequency and then aim for half-full loads.
Cars with 1 guy in them: I sleep
Buses with 10 people on them: real sh1t
10 people on 1 bus sounds pretty average tbh...
More so in off peak times
Haha
Another fun example might be:
"Imagine intersection lights only toggling red-green every 30 mins, meaning you might be stuck at one light for 30 mins."
Everyone would probably bike or walk since the other option is too risky.
@lwf51 upzoning is the only way
I remember when they cut night owl service on the mbta subway lines like 4 years ago because "there was low ridership". The mbta also cut late night "commuter rail" services in 2020 partially because of the same reason and partially because of pandemic cuts. those specific cuts have impacted me dramatically as I go to shows/concerts in Boston pretty frequently and nowadays I have to take $80 ubers back home to Providence because the last train home leaves Boston at 11 pm, sometimes uber drivers tell me they don't wanna drive all the way to Providence and kick me out of the uber
And thus we should have public transport!
As much as a lot of people like to hate on New York and even questionably disregard it all together when talking about American transportation, at least they have a ton of transit options and 24 hour subway lines which can be useful at any point in time
Singapore meanwhile withdrew all its late night buses in June this year (while late night trains ran only on certain event days e.g. StanChart Singapore Marathon), ironically just as night-life was picking up as pandemic-related curbs were being relaxed
@@lzh4950 How do people go to nightlife now then? Surely they want to support the economy right?
Or do most peeps have a car there?
Re the Uber thing the solution is simple: tell them that if they kick you out, you'll immediately contact customer service in the app and demand a refund and tell them exactly what happened.
They're all "independent contractors". If they do something like that, they are not fired, they are "out of a contract". That means: no severance pay, and often a massive debt from the vehicle etc they bought/had to invest in themselves. In America, many will probably be homeless in a ditch a short while later.
They know that. So just tell them to bring you to your destination as agreed or you'll demand a refund from uber - they will suddenly become VERY cooperative! ;)
The point about mostly empty cars really does say everything about why complaining about empty transit vehicles makes no sense. At least I could get on a quiet train or bus or tram whereas if I tried to get in someone's mostly empty car, I would probably get arrested. Transit with room to spare is good in my opinion. If it is packed like a tuna can, no one wants that. There should always be a little extra room. It will make transit always comfortable and thus more attractive.
Not to mention that you can move to a different part of the bus if another passenger is being creepy.
Recently, my young daughter and I were on a bus when a man boarded and started loudly discussing all the sexual things he wanted to do to a nearby female passenger. I had to be responsible for my child, otherwise I would have tried to help the woman out. (Kiddo was wearing headphones so she didn't hear the comments.)
Because the bus was full, the passenger being harassed couldn't move seats or easily escape to another area of the bus.
And before someone declares that harassment doesn't happen in private vehicles, I'll point out that I feel much safer waiting at a bus stop with other passengers than walking through a parking garage to get to a private vehicle.
Yep, space is a feature for transit!
@@HarryLovesRuth on a relatively empty bus you have a place to stay away from creeps or get off at the nearest stop, on a car the creep is usually the driver and you're stuck with them, like an uber driver or worse, someone you've always known and trusted.
Another reason for empty buses is where they are travelling against the passenger flow, for example from the city centre to a housing estate in the early morning, or from an industrial estate or business park to the city centre in the early morning. But they need to do that in order to get back to where the passengers are and pick up another batch.
Tl;dr: The coverage needed for transport to be viable for passengers, also means running vehicles at times and places sometimes where the buses won't always be completely full.
wouldn't it be TLDW?
@@tonywalters7298 technically yes but tl;dr is essentially it's own word now translating to "this is the short version," you could change it but that only serves to potentially cause confusion
My country has both short-working trips (SWTs) & 'downroute' buses for that kind of scenario. The former end halfway along a bus service's route while the latter don't, but will begin from a bus stop mid-way along the service's route. There's even 1 SWT that terminates just 1 stop before the terminus stop as after the penultimate stop, the driver would have to turn at a junction to get to the terminus, so is he/she is operating a SWT, he/she didn't have to, & could instead go straight at the junction & on to the bus depot in another location, making overall bus operations more convenient (with less inconvenience to passengers as the 2 stops are near each other). The reason why the service still has regular trips going to the terminus stop is because that's located in a bus interchange/station/terminal that has facilities allowing the bus to turnaround to operate the service again at a later time slot e.g. toilets, sign in/out office for the bus driver (for drivers to record in the computer system that they've completed running a bus service or are going to run a new one). SWTs are for buses that don't need to turnaround e.g. because peak hours are ending & thus frequency can be reduced with some buses being withdrawn from service, since the depot that they will end up in eventually is further away & would incur more dead mileage to turnaround from
The last bus of the day always should be empty. So that you can try to get the one running just before the last, but know that you will still get home if you run into some delays.
If you cut the last bus off the schedule for being empty, people will still get the one earlier than the last bus. Or train, tram, etc.
I do take the last bus pretty often and it is by far not empty. Why? Because I expect the transit authority to send in another bus if the last one breaks down. And I experienced it two times already. Of course, this applies only to services when I do not need to transfer to other lines.
Very true! You can't plan for the last bus and miss it.
@@frida507 If you miss it by being late at the stop, then it is your fault.
There's a generally agreed upon standard that if the last trip is doing better than 40-50% of the previous trip then an additional trip should be added after the existing last trip. The same would be said for the first trip of the day.
Vehicles going to and from their depots should take passengers for that.
We have a cross city route, subject to long traffic delays, where the locals call them the banana buses.
They are yellow, and come in bunches.
Haha, more queue jump lanes and transit signal priority!
@@RMTransit
Unfortunately, the route uses a lot of single carriageway, and bus lanes are impossible.
@@michaeloreilly657 then just ban cars lol
Oddly enough, on every bus I've taken it's always fluctuated mid-route, being fairly empty deep in the countryside but absolutely packed through the major towns
I've seen some buses also that run quite empty from a suburb, until it reaches an industrial estate in peak hours where it's the only bus serving that area, & then you have ~100 people boarding the bus @ 1 go. & back then if you don't make it on the bus the next 1 is like 15min away
That's every bus ever here in India
One thing, that often gets ignored by those, who argue against nearly empty busses: It is only a small part of the passangers jurney over the day or even the week.
If you sometimes have events after work downtown, for example go to a hockeygame once a week, it is that event, that decides, if you use a transit pass or a parking space at the workplace.
If you need a parking lot once a week, because there are no late evening busses/trains, you‘ll most likely rent one anyways, so why not always use a car?
On the other hand: If there is late night public transport, you can use it after that weekly event, so why should you rent a parking lot downtown?
The flexibility for the users is, why late evening public transit or 24 hours service reduces car traffic during peak hours
This likely depends on where you live - my experience in Australia is that parking is more on a day rate a lot of the time, though there may well be people who rent parking spaces for the week to avoid competition for carparks.
I always feel so happy and blessed, when my chauffeur drives me around in one of my Mercedes all by myself. People in cars miss out on this unique experience in busses. But admittedly, the BVG busses here in Berlin are especially nice.
The fullest a commuter transit vehicle will ever get on average is 30%: It starts empty towards the city center, gradually fills up to arrive at 100% capacity. The average occupancy is therefore 50%. Then it turns around and drives back out again against the commuter flow, therefore at only about 10% occupancy. The average of those two directions is thus 30%.
Keep this in mind whenever shows you an empty bus: It could well be runnig at peak capacity in the other direction or further down the line.
Also, you must run a decent service in off peak hours. If a line starts to run evey 60 minutes after 18:00, than less people will ride it even at times of high demand. Because people tend to go somwhere to spend some time there. And if on their way back they are risking a long wait for the bus, especially if they do not know how long they stay, they will not use public transit. A service must be provided even for those people in order to make them use public transport in the first place. Not everyone commutes in peak hours into one direction and then again in peak hours in the other. Another thing is promoting monthly or even yearly tickets. Once people buy, they already paid in advance which makes them consider taking public transit more often than just to work and back. They will start to use it even for occasional trips, since for them, it will be "for free". Why should they take a car, if they can take a bus and not pay anything extra?
I appreciate that somebody can adore buses so much. He’s like Sheldon Cooper for buses.
empty buses are so nice to be in, you get comfort to do some small things that usually other passengers may notice you doing and judge you, but with nobody around you can get comfy (don't take it too far, of course)
Another point is that empty buses are necessary for people who go to work/school in off-peak hours. For example, if I leave home at about 4:00 pm and return at 11:00 pm, I can only take the bus if it's available both ways. The 4:00 pm bus is usually almost full, while the 11:00 pm bus has only one or two passengers. But the entire route is only viable for me as long as the 11:00 pm bus exists.
You know? Where I lived, there’s this group of strange minded people who argue that buses are actually the cause of Traffic jams, not private cars.
What was their point?
@@MimOzanTamamogullar Buses bad! We need MORE cars on the road that’ll lead to less traffic! Assuming CaptainM792 lives in America, where half the country lives in bizzarro world where reality is the opposite
People hate being behind the bus as the bus tend to stop every now and then thus slows the traffic creates this line behind bus where everyone that is stuck try to move to the left lane. That's their reason.
I'm not sure if you mention it but the second of severely bunched buses is often empty
Yup you mentioned it!
Yeah which is why bunching is quite pernicious!
I think the perfect response to most of these people is "The road in front of your house is empty most of the time!" because they're usually people who live on a little suburban street.
Gotta love the X bus at peak hours. You see the first bus coming by all full and just ignore it because you know that sweet sweet roomy X bus is coming right behind!
Reasons I see from my Swiss perspective:
1) Directional traffic during rush hour
2) Maintaining the same frequency over the full day as during rush hour.
3) Decreasing traffic towards the end of lines [that serve the periphery and don’t connect to other lines].
4) As feeder for the main lines (ie, to fill the more expensive main lines)
5) More generally to enable more people to get by without a car or just to make it worth for them to buy monthly passes or similar
And how frequently (in Switzerland, where the timetables are all integrated) must buses (trolleybuses included) must run at a minimum? What is the minimum frequency that does not make ridership suffer?
Years ago, my small IT office did some statistics work for a company monitoring public traffic use. Basically, we've messed around with passenger numbers, way diagrams etc. The most interesting facts I remember from that time: 1. Usually, during an entire shift, the average number of passengers was roughly enough to operate a bus or tramway line. 2. Almost-empty rides were compensated by other crowded runs. 3. New lines established take 3-6 months as "bootstrap time" to get known to potential users, but if a new route is planned well, it will be used by enough people to allow efficient operation. 4. The only problem are night buses. They aren't profitable, but you'll need them in some cities to offer your customers a reasonable service. Otherwise they would switch from public transport to private cars.
The point of visible transit being more enticing to potential riders is really important. This is probably the entire reason why trams (which usually don't go much faster than buses) are typically a lot more popular than buses on the same route.
Applies to trolleybuses too. Simply by seeing the overhead wires, you know that there must be some service on the road. And usually it is and it is frequent enough to justify the build and maintenance of the infrastructure. Studies showed that once a bus route was converted to trolleybus, ridership increased by 10% to 15% without any special advertising or bigger vehicles or more frequent service. Seeing a bus stop has way less effect than seeing an actual physical piece of infrastructure all over the place.
I always appreciate these kinds of videos because they're so helpful in online discussions where people try and discredit public transit.
As someone who takes one of those "empty buses" to work I see a whole lot of people complaing about gas prices and not a whole lot of people taking the bus. In fact traffic has gotten wrose were I live.
Another important point is that low-ridership, suburban local routes are important for feeding busier routes through transfers, even if the suburban routes don’t get much ridership themselves. If you reduced or removed the suburban local routes, the main-line routes wouldn’t get nearly as much ridership because the area they can serve would be so much smaller.
A reason buses are empty or nearly so around here is because they’re going to places we don’t want to be, and not providing local service within the neighbourhood. Contrary to what the bus company assumes not everyone needs to get downtown.
We have this issue in Montreal, they cut the schedules for buses and trains. So let's say you work downtown in the morning the service is great with a bus every 10 minutes and a metro every 3 minutes, but if you do night shifts, it is a bus every 20 minutes and a metro every 10 min. The people planning that are so dumb. It is even more frustrating, because you experiment the good and the bad frequencies on the same lines. It makes the services unreliable and inconsistent.
People use it for school but then the bus line is basically useless
Good point about cars usually being 75% empty when moving, and still taking up paved space the rest of the time when they're 100% empty.
Both cars AND buses take up paved space when they are 100% empty. So, do planes, too.
@@laurie7689 Technically, that's obviously true. But an individual car typically transports one person for maybe hours per day and then sits empty for about 22 hours, whereas a bus may be empty for ten hours.
@@danwylie-sears1134 Typically, my own person vehicle will be sitting on my own personal land for those empty hours, unlike a bus or a plane. Even if I didn't have a vehicle, I could still concrete the entire surface of my land. As owner, that is my privilege.
My town's routes tend to be mostly empty outside of peak hours but atleast theres plenty of options of finding a seat.
But when those peak hours hit OH BOY my town's busses (being Enviro 200 darts) are filled to standing room only.
The bus stop i live near gets filled with students from the nearby school to easily fill 1-2 busses atleast.
And Frequency ranges from every 10-30 minutes depending on the line and well traffic.
More all day service would be good!
This video provided me with a bunch of new arguments I can use. Thanks, Reece!
Awesome to hear! That’s my goal!
We’ve been dealing with county commissioners on our local transit board using the empty bus remarks in an attempt to cut funding of late. It’s felt impossible to get this style of argument through to them.
This reminds me of one commute I had that was empty when I got on, but full to capacity only a couple of stops later because it passed by the local college campus. So much so that they usually ran two buses back to back. It's quite the sight having two completely empty buses pass you by.
One important thing about transit planning, as said in the video, people change , better local transport probably means more passengers on long distance trains and so on, so a unprofitable route can be profitable on when looking at the rest of Public transport
Empty buses is the definition of heaven on earth.
A similar argument is largely use by critics of Amtrak: that its long-distance trains are supposedly running empty. Of course, as someone who rides long-distance trains every once in a while, I know that the trains are quite well patronized. And, with the recent challenges of post-pandemic shortages of staff and/or equipment, it’s not surprizing to see these trains get sold out completely. But the critics don’t want to factor these facts in, as it goes against their agenda. Also, they ignore the fact that a long-distance train serves multiple city pairs along its route, and not all (not even the majority) of its passengers are traveling all the way end-to-end. Biased - or, sometimes, paid - critics don’t accept logic.
This cycle with reducing services deliberately to reduce ridership has often been used in the past if railway companies, especially in western europe, wanted to get rid of unprofitable lines or stations/halts. Like: reduce the service to a few trains a day at inconvenient times and see the ridership fall rapidly. Offer a competing bus service with a way more frequent service and there you are! You can argue that the passengers rather use the bus than the train and there is your reason to close the line. Has been done in western germany in the 1960 to 1980 countless times...
My country instead can wait for up to ~40 yrs after a neighbourhood is 1st filled with housing before building a train station because they're worried the station will be underutilised, and sometimes the neighbourhood wasn't so well designed to accommodate the station, leading to compromises that reduce the convenience factor e.g putting the station further away from where people want to go to. Like there's a suburban neighbourhood centre built adjacent to a reservoir in the early-1980s, but when a train station was finally opened in 2017, it was sited some 400m SW probably as it was more difficult to tunnel closer to the reservoir (since there also wasn't much space for overground rail), where the soil is expected to contain more water & thus maybe be too unstabe/soft to tunnel thru safely
It's good that they're getting rid of induced demand
As Jarrett Walker says in human transit, it probably doesn't make sense to switch from big buses during peak hours to smaller buses off-peak as that would require driving back to the depot, which takes up significant fuel costs.
A similar argument is why many train operators either keep many of their trains the same length (when they can be shortened), or use trains that can't be split easily. The costs of shortening then re-lengthening the trains were seen to be greater than to just leave them out there (staff needed to split them, to move the empty unit, etc and the same in reverse)
A transit system is about total ridership and not a single bus. Perhaps one route loses money but is very important to a certain neighbourhood. Perhaps the route is overstretched during rush hour but quiet otherwise. But my issue is one person per car.
The real question that people should ask when they see an empty bus isn't "why this empty bus is still being run" but "why am I not on it".
traffic light priority is such a big deal. Over here (Netherlands) most cities have priority for public transport, and around busy points like train stations or city centers they often get a special lane so they can cut to the front of the line. Taking public transport gets you a VIP treatment as reward
watching this man's videos progress and improve is honestly so exciting. Keep it up bestie 🖤
This is such a good video. I can't believe how insightful this channel is sometimes. I wish I could force the whole country to watch it.
Love your videos. Keep them coming, they are superb to watch as a civil engineering student in NYC! Thanks !
Exactly.
The concept is that transit is a "service" so must be continuous along the day and frequent enough to give the idea of continuity.
If I have a bus every 4 hours, I am never going to choose the bus for every activity that requires less than 4 hours.
If I have a frequent service and that covers from early morning to late evening, I can switch to transit knowing that I will be able to go back home whenever I want (reasonably).
The thing is that when timetables are planned, they are planned to keep things easy (train every 30 min for example) in order to be easy to memorize and in order to have always the same travel time in both directions (symmetric timetable).
This means that demand will be very variable during the day and the 80/20 rule applies: 20% of the trips cover 80% of the demand. So it is known that in a good service, 80% of the vehicles will run losing money...which is recovered by the 20% travelling at full or over capacity.
Example: sometimes after work I went to some meetings in the city I was working. If the "empty" train late in the evening (10-11 pm) had not been available, I would have not been able to take part to the activities in the city (economic growth). But because of that, I was able to enjoy my evening out and go back in a empty train and reach home.
And guess what? In the morning I had to travel on the busy train as everybody to go to work.
So it makes totally sense: no empty trains? You lose customers on the busy one too.
What exactly do you mean by an activity requiring less than 4 hours?
For example, if I want to go out to buy groceries, I may need only 1 hour to do that. It would be crazy to think people would wait an extea 3 hours after doing their groceries.
If people know they can use transit to get anywhere whenever they want - even places they only go once a month or even once a year, they're more likely to realise they don't need a car and get rid of it and therefore use the transit more often.
So true. The bus that goes past my street goes to a major shopping mall in Melbourne. I hate driving there and hate parking there so the once or twice I year I have to go there to visit a specific shop i go by bus. It is so much easier and more relaxing.
I used to catch the 111 bus line in Boston and it clearly suffered from the following bus problem. Sometimes I would choose to wait the next bus, but it was always a gamble, because sometimes the following bus wouldn't come right after lol
Bunching is a big universal problem for buses, it takes a concerted effort to minimize it!
On this topic you are spot on. Im an operator for Omaha Metro and we experience this issues a lot. As for bunching, I feel that scheduling (and the lack of recovery time) plays a huge part in bunching/empty buses as well. We have a few routes (the 3-40th/42nd, 18-Ames/72 and 24-24th) that are timed way too tight and are often delayed due to both road and passenger traffic. Once a bus falls behind it's nearly impossible to catch back up. The next bus catches the first, and the cycle begins. It can take hours to finally get back on schedule.
Yeah, buses being empty are like regularly-maintained roads being empty, especially those rural roads no one really travels on. Or it's like those street lamps that no one uses in neighborhoods/highways at night sometimes.
The point is that the Infrastructure is there always available for anyone who wants it. In such a way it gives freedom.
It's time to look at public transportation as the infrastructure it is. It's not something to always make money off.
I've had an disagreement with somebody who complained that the buses in the city centre were always empty. He didn't believe me when I told him that the buses were full when they arrived at the bus stop at start of street and they were empty when they passed him because they had finished the service and were running to the another stop to start its return trip.
The 'bonus' coming from seeing the bus go by, maybe empty and thinking 'ah I could use the bus next time' is even stronger when it comes to systems that need visible infrastructure. I've heard this being called the 'rail bonus' referring to the rails for trams, as they make it very obvious where the route goes, you just follow the infrastructure and get to a stop, and it's generally obvious that a transit system is present, this bonus is actually studied by some people. There's also discussion going on whether an 'overhead wire bonus' exists for trolleybuses, but it's suggested it's less strong if I remember correctly. Regardless, this is an advantage buses and underground systems don't have as you can only see the stops and nothing else from the surface.
In my city busses always stop at every stop.
I never knew that in some countried people actually ask for a bus to stop.
2:50 I'd never thought of that before, that's a good point!
It’s worth noting that on extremely heavy bus routes like Chicago’s Route 49 Western Avenue, limited stop express routes that stop only every 4 blocks or at rail stations, can reduce bus bunching while speeding customers on very long trips on the route. This reduces the workload of local buses stopping every block or two, by encouraging long haul riders on the route to use the Xpress device while making local bus service faster too.
You have answered this subject very wisely. The other day I heard a guy commenting the same calling their bus system useless. I also questioned the same that why I see buses mostly empty or half full.
That cutaway to camera #2 is pretty cool
The title baffled me. Great video. Imagine if the hate for empty buses were applied to paratransit!
Absolutely, transit is not the same as driving and it should not be assessed through the same lens
@@RMTransit Exactly.
Paratransit is just the opposite! Extra pickups crammed into the same car, long wait times, and extended windows of arrival because they are trying to do too many trips using the same driver.
@@RMTransit maybe Reese you could do a video about paratransit and it’s woes sometime. I imagine many people don’t know how it functions and the issues around it.
@@qwincyq6412 Right! I was more thinking about the times that those vehicles get empty, like everyone being dropped off and going to a pickup.
Because of the times I work at, empty busses are quite common, as I start earlier than everyone else I usually get on when there is only 2 or 3 people on board or none at all. When I finish its normal to see about 5 people on board, I sometimes get on when busses are packed but thats mostly Fridays or when there is an event.
I was always sad that no i saw almost no one at our bus near my home.. but your video changes my mind
I love the bad argument version of this. "you're right, this major road is only running at 20% capacity each day, far from adding a lane we should take one away" ... "but it's full during rush hour".... yeah, exactly. But no-one wants to demolish half the CBD to build bus and train parking so they can enter during morning rush hour and hang around until the evening
I often would walk 8 miles to work because every bus was full+. Empty buses are a fairy tale in this desert.
In Chennai(India), people are happy to see buses empty.
I used to live near a minor bus stop, therefore I took the bus about four times a week. At the time I went to the bus stop, three lines passed by in a span of seven minutes. I would always take the third and last line, because it was always only half full, even in rush hour, instead of the other two, which always was full to the brim.
In Riga we have 59' bus route, that replaced same trolley route, due low passanger flow. Now it's shortest route in city, includes 4 stops. It takes about 10 minutes to drive from start to the end, and drivers wait for 30 minutes at one of destination points. I had to ride on it for fun, and there was no any passangers... kinda weird
In Zürich, Switzerland, bunching was cited as a reason to introduce double-articulated busses on busy routes. This was done instead of just increasing the frequency (of the merely single-articulated buses that were already operating there) which was already high with something like every seven minutes).
Switzerland's timetables, according to another video by Reece Martin, are all integrated. But how frequent must buses in Switzerland (trolleybuses included) run at a minimum.
I didn't know that much about this stuff. It makes sense, but it's cool to learn.
wow thanks for posting this ! I used to think this exact thing. Thanks
It's true that most cars have more empty seats than filled ones. There is a big gap in the market for a recumbent motorcycle with all weather capability.
Hey RM, a video on Durham Regions move to having you order a bus via app for service in the suburbs instead of regular scheduled service would be great. This was a move the Ford Government has called "innovative", so it would be very useful to inform people about the pros/cons as it may be coming to more of Ontario.
They tried that in Oxford, England, and it didn't work out.
@@katbryce Ya, I don't particularly like it, which is why I would like RM to kind warn people its happening in the GTA, and the province (which controls the municipalities and (mainly for the better) is increasingly directly in control of transit) is interested in the model.
That said, if it ends up improving services at a lower price I could be convinced. I'm not against change. So the video would be of interest to me.
It was used as a way to sub out low demand fixed route services with the commitment that as ridership grew routes would go back to fixed with higher frequency, which seems pretty reasonable to me.
@@RMTransit I think the big problem is, if you know that the bus leaves at for example 10 minutes past every hour, you can plan your day around that. If you have to book it on an app, and you have no idea if it will turn up in 10 minutes or 50 minutes, it is a lot less attractive. It is obviously not going to be Über like response times, because then you would have to pay Über like fares for it.
It could be effective in small towns with rail stations.
For me, my biggest gripe was always empty dedicated bus lanes. Not because I'm sitting in traffic and see a nice empty lane, but because there are also buses sitting in traffic when they have a perfectly usable lane to use. 😂 YRT and VIVA should stop with the politics and just work together to make transit really work.
Oh, I guess a distant second is bus stops before an intersection rather than after. If they make the stop past the intersection they could use the same technology used for fire engines to keep the light green until it passes. May not be relevant now with better precision location based technologies.
Helpful video, thanks. From a grammar nerd to a transit nerd: we say "fewer people" in English, not "less people" when talking about quantity of people. "Less busy" is obviously fine though.
Let's not forget the hourly empty buses. So much ink of spilled disparaging "empty" buses on hourly routes that they never have a chance lol
A few issues to comment on. 1. I like the shoe analogy. A toddler’s shoe is say 20 % size of an adult shoe but costs about 80% of an adult’s. Similarly, running a 20 seat bus might give 10- 15% overall savings on a 50 seat bus .
2. Express bus A serves points 1 and 2 exclusively. It carries 35 passengers on average over it’s 9 mile non stop journey. It looks efficient and well used to the person seeing it pass by , particularly if they are not waiting at a stop it bypasses
The stop bypassed by express bus A is served by an all stops bus B. There are 27 stops on the 9 mile route. At any one time there’s typically no more than 8 - 10 passengers on board the 50 seat bus B. Typically, 2 board and 2 alight at each stop. This “empty” bus B has carried 54 passengers compared to 35 on the “well loaded” express bus A.
3. At certain times and for certain purposes empty returns or fallow layovers are unavoidable eg school trips and sports fixtures. This phenomenon is common to pretty well all transport activities. For example, at any one time there’s an equal number of empty and full cement mixers on the road. Who would ever suggest a cement mixer returned loaded?
Great arguments. Also the revenue earned from those short distance passengers will be even higher than the difference in passenger numbers
There are also “emptier” buses because there are special services. More people than you think can’t take a subway because of age, mobility or accessibility issues (until they finally put elevators in all the stations). In Montreal: 166 Queen Mary, 125 Ontario, 29 Rachel, 138 NDG, 150 René-Lévesque… And if ever there is a problem in the métro, there is some recognizable supplemental service already in place with the 30 or 31 St-Denis, 15 Ste-Catherine or 17 Décarie.
Love this video!
In this city an empty bus means botched scheduling, or a driver who is tailgating another bus on the same route to avoid picking anyone up. Sample schedule from the ferry terminal: 12:45, 12:55, 1:00, 1:45. 1 of these 3 buses that are all clustered will run full, the other 2 drive off empty. Sometimes it's the first bus. Sometimes the first 2 buses watch the as the ferry pulls in and drive away empty leaving the last one overflowing and people standing on the road waiting 45 minutes for the next cluster.
I kind of laugh when people complain about an underutilized train when cares are at 25% capacity most of the time, but it didn't occur to me that an actual empty bus wasn't likely to stay empty when it completes its route. Thanks for pointing that out.
I live in Windsor and our busses are pretty full, run every 10 minutes on major routes. We have many international students who use these buses the most.
An empty bus is a bus I want to be on - plenty of seats to pick from :)
As a bus driver in the uk (or at least at my bus depot) , to prevent bunching (we call it leap frogging because we bounce around each other) if we see the same service in our mirror and we are running late we drive past waiting passengers and signal the driver behind to pick them up. Some waiting passengers may realise you’re late and tell you to keep going and catch the one behind. We also put our foot down when it is safe to do so 😉. But as a driver, it doesn’t matter if we run late. Passengers understand and we get double paid overtime! Managers always say it’s better to be late than never, they’ll never tell us off for being late but they’ll always tell us off for being early. Our running boards (time sheets) don’t account for passengers, traffic, diversions, traffic lights, wheelchair users (we only have manually operated ramps), elderly people, that passenger that never had their money/ pass ready, heck some routes give you 5 minutes to get to the next timing point 10-15 minutes away!
We had a couple of interesting examples. We had a contract for the local collieries, so we never maxed out on revenue but passengers carried when they were three shift ones, were high, into the pit and off shift guys going home, similar was done by others on the nuclear power sites in Somerset and Cumbria. In Stoke on Trent the essentially five conjoined towns we could run first trams then buses constant on and off , and the factories traditionally had a lunch break where either everyone went home or the half shifts finished, so again , this time season ticket holders, we had three peaks morning lunch and evening add in the evenings of the cinema bus before we had TV and we carried four times the number of passenger journeys than other companies elsewhere could.
Very interesting
Shout out (again) for the Oxford Tube and Ofxord express coaches. Fully commercial buses that operate 24 hours a day on 5-20 minute headways betwern London an Oxford.
That exception rather than the rule
@@s125ish Yes but good illustration of the need to consider load as a whole over the service, not on each individual vehicle; and that this is not inconsisrent with maximising profit.
Great video, as always.
I used to live on Bayview south of Davisville, and that #28 Bayview South bus, which goes all the way to the Brickworks, was continually extremely empty. I realize the Brickworks is a decently important site to have public transit access, but... I swear, day or night, there *might* be two people on that thing all the time. Always wondered if it would've been better to only have every other bus go all the way down into the valley to the Brickworks, and then the other ones could turn around at Moore or something.
Woah! New camera work looks immaculate.
Thank you!!!!
5:00 this is so true. On NE Alberta St in Portland, buses go by constantly when you're hanging out or eating on the street and it constantly reminds me of Trimet
Major bus routes in Umea typically get 40% full before reaching the first network hub. The city's largest high school is west of the CBD, this [...] means that the only line serving it gets really crowded in the peak. So much so that they have added partial infills on that line. There is another line serving the school, but it runs only every 60 minutes, and I don't really know who even uses it. Talked about it a lot on Discord.
I'd rather be alone on an otherwise empty bus than on a crowded bus.
I’d rather have the option for either than just one of them.
In my home town I always saw fairly lightly loaded busses, and wondered how the bus company was making money (routes weren't subsidised). I didn't go into the centre of town much and when I did it was either by bike or train. Anyway when I got the bus I realised I was at the end of the route and the busses were picking up many people along the way and in some cases were almost full by the time it got to the centre of town.
buses are always too busy to be comfortable and too empty to be worthwhile to these people, and somehow both simultaneously
It sooo strongly depends on time of day. I never knew metro rail transit in this city can even get so full until I had to go somewhere early morning. I’m sure many people just don’t see it at key times of the day.
In the same city but different area, I keep seeing empty buses because the government runs them infrequently (leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy) and doesn’t seem to make any effort to unbunch them consistently.