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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

Bus lanes and stops are actually empty a lot of the time, they just need to be clear at the particular moment when the bus needs them.

With real-time tracking of bus and delivery vehicle locations, I wonder if it would be feasible to work out a software solution that allows delivery vehicles official, coordinated access to the unused time slices. Much like an automated version of what air traffic controllers do for runways and taxiways.

So for example, when a UPS truck enters a neighborhood where it needs needs to deliver 3 packages, the UPS routing software could query the transit agency software telling it the 3 locations, and it could respond with time ranges that they're available. Bus #123 will be at stop #456 at 2:33pm, and that stop won't be needed by another bus until 2:44pm, so we can reserve the time slot 2:35pm-2:42pm for you to make your delivery.

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Accurately predicting when a bus will be at the stop in a window 2 hours into the future is effectively impossible, but being able to say "this stop won't be needed in the next 5 minutes" is almost certainly feasible. So the UPS software would need to dynamically decide the routes based on parking availability that is constantly changing throughout the day. Not an easy problem, but one that seems solveable.

The city only needs to publish the ETA for the next bus on each stop, information that bus riders would also find extremely useful.

Busses get slowed down for any number of reasons. Bus schedules are basically fantasies, as any big city resident can tell you. There are too many things that can slow a bus down. Stop lights, accidents, securing wheelchairs, delivery vehicles blocking your lane, construction, police activity, congestion, the guy who gets on and discovers he doesn't have bus fare and wants to argue about it, and on and on and on.

> as any big city resident can tell you.

I used to take the bus every day in Prague (Czech Republic) for about 6 years. It was almost always on schedule in both the morning and afternoon.

I don't know anywhere near enough to argue why in general. But not having drivers sell tickets, and route planning certainly help. For example, shorter routes are guaranteed to reduce variance. But I'm not sure what the downsides are.

Former Seattle (now Las Vegas) resident here. To make the buses run on time, the planners build in "time stops." These are locations where the bus should go through at specific times to not be too early for the rest of the schedule, and they also provide some buffer for buses to recover time lost due to bike loading, disabled passengers, and traffic congestion. If you're getting the bus after a time stop, you'll likely almost always get it on time. If your stop is before the time stop, bus arrival times will vary wildly.

It gets even more interesting when you add transport of the bus: the Seattle (King County) Metro also serves Vashon Island, so some of the buses travel on ferries with their associated delays and peculiarities.

> some of the buses travel on ferries That's an interesting that they would do that along an entire route rather than splitting the two. I've never heard of that before.

I also do really like how Seattle has that dedicated busway twice a day. It's one of the avenues downtown right?

Third Avenue downtown, yes.

Also an insaneo bike lane iirc.

I get on a bus right before a time stop. It's only about 30 blocks after the previous time stop (Northgate TC) but has arrived as soon as 5 minutes before the posted time. That's always fun when combined with a 10 minute late bus following it.

It always stings to see the bus approach early such that I have to run for it, only to then have it wait for 5 minutes at the time stop 2 stops later.

In smaller cities with less congestion it's much easier to keep the busses running on schedule. I took the bus every day when I was in college and it was like clockwork, but that was in a modest town with low population density. The situation gets worse in a hurry when you're in the middle of Manhattan on roads that were originally laid out for horses.

One thing that helps is that the transit authority (ie. DPP, routes that are run by other companies usually are not that good at keeping the schedule) seems to genuinelly care about keeping the schedule. For streetcars there are online monitored checkpoints at least every kilometer or so (usually on each other stop, as part of the station sign, look for rectangular hole in the upper part) and buses are online GPS tracked, this dat is then used both to improve the scheduling and assess the driver's performance.

Edit: another thing that certainly helps is that most transit lines do not go through the typically congested streets (eg. no daytime public transit goes through the Magistrala in city center) and if they do they are separated (eg. Jecna).

This is the exact opposite of what UPS software does today. It routes based on spending the least amount of gas. Dynamic routing to also conserve fuel in NYC would be a quite a thing and what's the incentive to do that? They would need to get enough tickets to justify the cost.

> They would need to get enough tickets to justify the cost.

That's easy! Even more with the proposed automatic system.

> The city only needs to publish the ETA for the next bus on each stop, information that bus riders would also find extremely useful.

This information already is collected and available by text.

> Bus lanes and stops are actually empty a lot of the time, they just need to be clear at the particular moment when the bus needs them.

Yes, this is true. Here in Chicago, it is only illegal to block a bus stop if it is interfering with a bus [1]. I would imagine that this is the case in NYC as well.

[1] https://chicagocode.org/9-64-140/

Given that at high times of the day buses could be coming every 5 minutes, one could easily argue that you're interfering with buses. Later in the night, seems like a good compromise.

Great idea. I agree, they only have to be open when the bus is there. And in fact, maybe there is a $ amount that the city would be ok with if the bus lane was parked.I.e. if a ambulance was there. So if there was dynamic parking for city streets then potentially solved.

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