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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
We could slow down other traffic. Perhaps by having snipers shooting out the tyres of every hundredth car? That should have the same effect of encouraging people onto public transport.
Seriously. Sometimes thinking the unthinkable is stupid.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Replace the tires with racing slicks, re-paint the entire thing with primer only, loosen a few body panels, disable the governor, install a rear spoiler and fart can and you're ready to go.
People don't use buses in US because there are no buses. Outside New York, there is scarcely any usable public transportation in even largest metropolitan areas. Washington DC (with the second largest metro in US, which is also something like 50th world-wide) has what would be considered a "well developed" bus system for US. The buses in many areas run only during rush hour, and even then - 1-2 an hour. Outside rush hour (and immediate city center) buses run once an hour or not at all. The routes are designed to bring suburban commuters to metro stations or city center. There are virtually no usable routes that could take a person shopping, to school, much less from one non-central area to another. Making these buses faster won't change the fact that they are not very practical and few and far between.
Public transportation requires commitment of public funds and desire to develop and support a system. No city in US seems to have the will.
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. Laying rail does not have that flexibility. And that doesn't even consider the capital costs of acquiring real estate and building the appropriate rail infrastructure on it. . .
Because this cannot go wrong, right? faster buses, people getting on and off whenever wherever...allow drivers to drive off before people are seated...
Spot Mr. Risk averse. It's funny that you prove the author's point. You're so petrified of risks you'd rather peolpe do someething more dangerous instead.
And er, since when do you need to remain seated on a bus?
To examine the ridiculousness of this I suggest that Kauffman get into his car;
FFS, cars aren't busses. Busses are much much safer. The two are not equivalent,
Even if he thinks this is a great idea and willing to do that with his kids how many of us will follow? -I sure aint.
Why wouldn't you? If it was safer than a car and all those things made it feasible to ride instead of a car, you're safer overall.
WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The logic is sound, if people were cattle.
No, the logic is sound, period. No one would force people to take those busses. They still have the freedom of choice to not take them and go by car instead. If you ignore Jeff Kaufman, then you are sacrificing other people. Just because something is the status quo doesn't mean it gets a free pass ethically.
Every single decision makes tradeoffs.
Deciding to build a new road? Well if you invested the money in hospitals you'd save lives instead, so absoltely every single decision can be re-formulated in terms of saving opr sacrificing lives.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
That's tosh. This isn't about executing people, it's about balancing risk, and we do it all the time. When you set safety standards for equipment, you do so accepting a level of risk, not pretending you've made the activity safe and this is no different. In the UK, buses pull off before people have sat down, and indeed traditional London buses allowed you to board and alight at your own risk from the platform at the rear.
You encourage people to make better decisions, but you can't always encourage them to make the perfect decision.
jh
Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?
Don't you mean Flxible?
Nonsense.
The key issue with public transport is frequency, not speed. When I'm sitting on the bus, I don't want the driver to stop and go at breakneck pace - especially if I'm trying to drink my take-away latte or get some code done on my laptop. Or, perhaps even both at the same time. You have your head free and are not in racecar mode, that's a killer cirteria of PT.
Frequency is the actual issue with busses and other PT. It goes a long way that busses and taxis here in Germany often have their own lanes, but double the frequency and you'll reach a tipping point for PT. The streets here in Europe are clogged and cluttered to a max, stuffed with cars parking 97% of their lifetime. It's insane. Car love is basically modern days mass psychosis.
I hope that all changes when the self-driving cars come. That's actually the exact issue Sundar Pichai and the Google Car crew are aiming at.
Once we have robots driving busses, we can have them go more often and needn't train and pay busdrivers. I really hope to see that day soon.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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.
Ahahahahaha, so true!
But things are changing, in big cities, buses are already equipped with door brakes (they can't move while doors are open) and GPS speed tracking. People are able to report bad driver behaviour online or by phone, and corrective actions are taken. The reality is that the great majority of people here in Brazil ride buses to go to work, and they can't afford another means of transportation. Buses are not generally used by the middle/upper classes, who usually ride taxis/uber when the need arises.
By the way, this inequality of social class in bus usage creates a problem: the local governments try to improve bus conditions and technology in order to increase security/comfort and incentive bus usage, but obviously this creates an increased fare in order to pay for the extra costs, which are taxing on the lower class population which are the majority of bus users, creating discontent. It's quite a chicken/egg problem.
Source: I work in the area.
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If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
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'd get by even better if they actually kept up the investment in conductors so the hop-on hop-off was routinely used. But BoJo got the money for the toy but not the conductors, the nobber. All mouth and no trousers, that one.
That's fine if you're able bodied but what if you're in a wheelchair, have a pushchair, a disability, carrying heavy shopping?
All the busses round here have automatically extending ramps for wheelchairs. Some of them also have pneumatic suspension so they can lower themselves down to help people who are less abled (e.g. crutches). It is generally considered good form to give up one's seat to someone in need of it and in fact some seats are dedicated to the purpose.
HAve some pictures:
http://www.google.co.uk/search...
In fact the busses even have a special stop request bell in the wheelchair bay so the driver even knows in advance when the wheelchair user is getting off, so they can extend the ramp.
Pushchairs are easy to get on and off anyway. I've done it and it's not hard. I've also helped random strangers numerous times at train and underground stations with carrying push chairs up and down flights of stairs. I'm not ususual in this regard.
Heavy shopping, well, one can generally put it on the floor when the bus is in motion. That's what I do.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A large part of the bus perception problem is the slow, smoky, lumbering diesels. A hybrid design with fully regenerative braking could accelerate and stop a lot faster, because there would no longer be such a fuel penalty for zippier operation.
In my part of the country, diesel buses were replaced years ago. Most are propane or NG powered around here. Since most city driving is relatively slow, anyway, being able to accelerate and stop quicker is usually not a factor. Also, remember, that the occupants aren't belted in, so zippier operation tends to take its toll on the riders.
Figure out a way to eliminate the individual payments.
Simple, increase the taxes to allow the public to ride for free. Mass transit is like schools. Good systems benefit the entire community, not just those directly using the system. Likewise, bad ones are a detriment. Since it is in everybody's best interest in a community to have a good mass transit system, then spread the cost among the community.
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..
This! I once tried to use our local bus system to get back and forth to to work.
So to catch the bus, I had to either leave work at 4:20 to catch a 4:30 bus or leave at 5:00 to catch a 5:30 bus. Leaving at 4:20 wasn't an option, so I waited a half hour. Then the bus went downtown and on campus then headed north to a shopping center and supermarket, then finally to my neighborhood, but that zig zagging meant yet more time. Finally, I got home at around 7:15. Kinda sucks when a 45 minute walk is replaced by a 2 hour plus process.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
A bus, depending on features, costs $100,000 to $1,000,0000 (a city bus is nowhere near a million though!) and requires very little additional supporting infrastructure. A tram or trainset costs $6,000,000 to $35,000,000, and requires track installed (typically $25-75 million per mile), plus stations at a cost of $5M+ each.
I love trains, but the argument for having them serve intracity traffic for all but the most traffic clogged of cities is very hard to make.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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Most people miss this. They say something like "how would I benefit since I *know* I would never take the bus", missing the fact that _other_ people taking the bus means less cars on the road, and hence your drive will be faster too.
In addition the call to make them more dangerous is likely to have exactly the opposite effect. How long do you think you will be delayed if someone falls off the open door trying to get on or off the bus?
It doesn't seem to be a problem in e.g. London.
But I think the problem here in the US is that we have a sue-happy culture without socialized healtcare. Often, the only way for someone who has had a fall accident to avoid bancruptcy is to find someone with deeper pockets to sue. And there are plenty of lawyers willing to line their pockets by assisting in just that.
Make people responsible for their own accidents, but provide them with decent free health care and employment compensation, and reinstate the old ius commune rule that no one must benefit from a lawsuit, not even the wounded party, and we might get rid of some of the nanny mentality.
You don't know what to do, really? Are you willing to pay more, to be inconvinced less? It is called discrimination. You discriminate against the handicapped individual, because you can. And, was it their fault they delayed you? Or the mode of transportation that they can afford to use? That delayed you?
It's not discrimination if it's done right. An easy solution is to have a bus for slow passengers whether it is someone in a wheelchair or someone in a stroller. One simple solution which wouldn't technically discriminate and would be in line with what this article is talking about would be for the "fast" bus to not stop. You make it like some trolleys where it slows down at a stop and you need to hop on/off while it's still moving. One of the major deterrents to mass transportation is that it is considerably slower than other forms of transportation. The goal should be to figure out how to get the majority of people from point A to point B in times similar to a car. This might require making it slightly less safe by not stopping at bus stops, providing a separate service for the disabled, collecting fares while the bus is moving, having express routes, allowing buses to have their own express lanes, having smaller buses more frequently or other ideas that speed up transit. Cost isn't really a factor for most people for mass transit, it's the long travel time and inconvenience so making it faster and more convenient should be the primary goal.
Done properly, buses make sense. Whoever wrote this article needs to move to a city with a modern public transit system. No paper money accepted. The machine that replaced the old fare box is exact change or electronic passes only. Driver doesn't waste time making change. No stopping at rail crossings. Change the law so buses pulling back into traffic after a stop have the right of way, articulated double length buses that cruise along the shoulder at 100 while traffic on the highway is barely crawling along, buses that run on time, a subway system that is clean, mobile apps so you can find the nearest stops, exact distance, and when the next dozen or more buses are passing, handicapped buses and taxis that charge only the regular bus fare, with the transit company making up the differenci, integrated light rail to the boonies, buses stopping between regular stops at night so that women can safely get off closer to home, proper coordination of stops so that connecting buses can often simultaneously exchange passengers who want to transfer, lots of bus shelters, etc. Heck, next year we're getting real time GPS tracking so we'll do even better than +/- 1 minute for each stop that we currently have, and air conditioning. Real air conditioning, not the crappy heat exchangers that I see the Brits complaining about. Sure it needs subsidies of over a billion a year, but it takes enough cars off the road to avoid spending billions on bigger roads and road maintenance, so everyone comes out ahead.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It's discrimination no matter how you cut it. You cannot tell a person in a wheelchair that "Sorry, you have to wait 20 minutes for the next bus," while everyone else at the stop can hop on. And all for your convenience. This is classic discrimination.
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.
I gotta laugh at the "freedom of my car" bit.
On the days that I don't take public transit to work, the days where I drive, I'm more stressed out and more tired. I hate it.
Fighting for parking, getting fuel, dealing with the school zones, the motorcycle cops trying to nail people, the hordes of smartphone watchers pretending to be drivers...
Damn, for the extra half hour it costs me I would take public transit.
When I take public transit I can read, zone out on my smartphone, sleep, play Ingress, whatever.
The only times I hesitate is a really cold day, which rarely happens.
Snow days are great thought, I love seeing everyone struggling as I casually walk the 15 minutes to/from my stop to work through the unplowed sidewalks.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
It's discrimination no matter how you cut it. You cannot tell a person in a wheelchair that "Sorry, you have to wait 20 minutes for the next bus," while everyone else at the stop can hop on. And all for your convenience. This is classic discrimination.
There are plenty of buildings that have "handicap entrances" and plenty of buildings where the masses can take the fast escalator while handicap and people with strollers have to wait for the much slower elevator which many times has a line. The handicap bus also doesn't necessarily need to be slower. As there are fewer handicap, it could possibly be an on-call system where it comes directly to you and takes you directly to your destination. The point is that if you only build bus routes for the lowest common denominator then it will be much much harder to get widespread adoption. If you eliminate all the stopping and all the zigzagging so that buses are the same speed as cars then alot more people would likely take the bus.
One hour between buses? Around commuting hours? Sorry to break it to you, but it isn't a case for buses inherently sucking, it's a case for the bus system you tried sucking super-hard.
There's nothing like $HOME
Then why charge for the service at all? If you make the service free, LOTS more people will use it.
I understand your point, but it's hard to fill a 500 person train (the $35M example) if run regularly (every 10-20 minutes) through normal medium-to-high density bus routes. You need a REALLY high density city (think New York, which most cities, even most big cities, are nothing like) to need that capacity.
Yes, $6M trains have advantages over $500,000 buses. They're more comfortable, they can be faster, and they have more capacity, and so on. But those advantages aren't significant in context.
I've lived in normal cities served by buses. Oxford during the late eighties/early nineties, during the period of bus privatization, was awesome. But even at rush hour, most people could find a seat on most buses, even though buses were actually getting smaller, and even though the amount of traffic was enough to justify cut throat competition between two private, unsubsidized, bus companies.
There's no advantage to having a 500 seat train in a normal city. New York, London, etc, yeah. Normal cities? No.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.