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Why Buses Need To Be More Dangerous
HughPickens.com writes: Is there such a thing as being too safe? Jeff Kaufman writes that buses are much safer than cars, by about a factor of 67 but buses are not very popular and one of the main reasons is that if you look at situations where people who can afford private transit take mass transit instead, speed is the main factor. According to Kauffman, we should look at ways to make buses faster so more people will ride them, even if this means making them somewhat more dangerous. Kauffman presents some ideas, roughly in order from "we should definitely do this" to "this is crazy, but it would probably still reduce deaths overall when you take into account that more people would ride the bus": Suggestions include not to require buses to stop and open their doors at railroad crossings, allow the driver to start while someone is still at the front paying, allow buses to drive 25mph on the shoulder of the highway in traffic jams where the main lanes are averaging below 10mph, and leave (city) bus doors open, allowing people to get on and off any time at their own risk. "If we made buses more dangerous by the same percentage that motorcycles are more dangerous than cars," concludes Kauffman, "they would still be more than twice as safe as cars."
Never going to happen though. Once someone as much as mentions a potential risk, the result with the current culture is an overreaction to avoid it.
No what is needed is having bus routes not suck. Wan to know why i drive instead of taking the bus? Because I dont have 1.5 hours for my commute to take the bus that goes from the stop near my home, to the mall, then to the other community and then finally downtown. Public transportation needs 2X the number of buses and 2X the number of routes.
PLUS there needs to be high speed limited stops large bus lines from suburbs to city and small cities around the large one at the fare rate that makes them usable.
Greyhound service is available from my city to where I work 40 miles away... at 3X the price of me driving and 5X the amount of time it takes to get there.
Public transportation in most american cities are not set up to be used, they are set up for the unemployed where they have 2 hours to fuck around on bus routes to get somewhere.
And that is not even covering the subject of the old man that smells of puke in the back that is screaming passages from revelations and never get's off the bus.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Buses need to be faster, even at the cost of reducing safety. Arguing that buses need to be designed to be more dangerous is disenguous. No one *wants* more dangerous buses. Better title: Buses need to be faster, even if more dangerous.
- Ben Bederson Professor Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction Lab University of Maryland
Buses are far more flexible than rail, for the simple fact that you can re-allocate buses, and create new routes anywhere you have a road.
The most "unfunny" part of bus rides is that they often goes in a zig-zag pattern all over the city between origin and destination causing the average speed to be slower than a bicycle, albeit usually not as sweat-driving as a bicycle ride.
Buses and trams are good for short rides, subways are good within a city including suburbs while trains are when you are reaching further away to more distant parts.
The key part is to keep public transportation competitive with cars, but the catch is that politicians now have figured out that if we make car use more cumbersome without improving the public transport system then more people will use public transports. But that's not necessarily true, it would just make people despise politicians even more.
The hop-on, hop-off style is an interesting method, and works for normal healthy people but not for people with disability, children or elderly people. However I don't rule it out completely because having variation in transport modes would make the transportation more efficient, even if disabled people may feel discriminated. Just make sure that those that may suffer a discrimination because they are unable to do the hop-on, hop-off get other advantages instead.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
We had them, nobody used them. Who wants to be waiting in a wheelchair in a snow storm? Instead, you can book a special handicapped bus or taxi door to door for the cost of a bus ticket, with the transit company making up the difference. Turns out it doesn't cost much more to the system, while allowing greater throughput and more precise scheduling of bus stops. An adapted minivan can take 3 wheelchairs and 3 attendants. A handicapped minibus can take more. We did keep the ability of the buses to lower the right side to make it easier for people with reduced mobility to get on and off. You'll get people to give up their cars if you make the service good enough.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.