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Comment by AceyMan | Hacker News Reader

I commute in LA and observe (and am impacted) by this regularly; so much so, that I've been meaning to write the municipal operator about solving the issue, or at least reduce the tendency (attractor?).

My mitigation idea: When the buses become bunched; the forward bus should switch to 'Disembark Only' mode. (Most modern buses I've seen have a preset to post this on the LED signage). This way it can pass all the stops with folks waiting and (we hope) will make enough time up to get far enough down the line to remain un-bunched.

Then, by some condition (e.g.,"back to within 5 minutes of posted schedule") switch back to normal "pickup & drop-off" mode.

It's very cool to see someone else noticing and thinking about this phenomena.

To quote the great thinker Yogi Berra, "You can observe a lot just by watching."

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Your comment makes me think of this comic: https://xkcd.com/277/

I often times have the same thoughts, but I have a feeling there are lots of considerations that we aren't taking into account when we create our solutions.

I feel a bit weird about this, because my father actually worked for the local highway department and I ended up learning about the stuff that goes into road design and engineering... and most of the payoff of that is that I complain when I see stuff done wrong.

And it's not just light timing; my single biggest gripe is when I can tell from driving on a road that its speed limit has been set significantly differently from its design speed (in either direction -- there are some local streets obviously set too low, but also some highway stretches that are obviously set too high).

I'd say there are a lot of local streets with speed limits to high, designed for speeds MUCH to high.

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2010/11/22/confessions-of...

Ehhh... that guy seems a bit off.

It is true that often residents demand something be done to force the average speed of traffic way below the design speed of the street, but generally it's not because some engineer slapped a major arterial into a cozy residential neighborhood. Rather, the common pattern is the residents moved in because they liked being conveniently on some minor artery that would get them to/from work quickly, but then decided after moving in that it had to change into a quiet residential street so their kids could go out and play in it.

The result, if the neighborhood can pull off enough local political clout, is usually that a street designed for good amounts of traffic doing 40+ mph starts getting its limit lowered to 35, then 30, then 25, then roundabouts and speed humps start showing up to enforce it, and you just get a mess.

Yes and no. The neighborhood where I live was laid out eighty or ninety years ago. Most families probably had a car by 1940, but I doubt many had two. Most had garages, some had driveways but no garage. Now I suspect that we are unusual in being a two-adult household with one car. A neighbor across the way has four vehicles--three cars and a pickup truck, all of which they must park on the street.

The increase in cars per household means that for a good ways in every direction, any side street will have cars parked on both sides. Two ordinary sized American cars can pass each other in what is left, but drivers usually find it safer to look for an unparked space where one can pull over a little. Twenty-five miles per hour does not feel slow on these streets (particularly from the right front seat).

You are completely correct about the residents wishing to slow things down. Thirty years ago one could get onto 13th St. NW in downtown Washington, and with a bit of luck hit no red lights all the way to Maryland. Now there are stop signs sprinkled between the lights. In Chevy Chase, there is I think one path left that takes one through the neighborhoods from Jones Bridge Road to Beach Drive where once there were many, the rest now blocked by barriers.

Ha, i feel the same way when, for some reason, for work experience I got stuck in the local government road planning department. I was bored out of my brain but I did learn about corner radius for speeds, acceptable road crests, minimum sighting distance for signs at various speeds, acceptable on-ramp lengths and on and on.

And all it ever did was highlight to me how often somene did a crap job. And usually there was always fresh evidence of crashes in the vicinity. The people who crashed were probably told they were bad drivers,m without realising half the problem was that some desk ok key was phoning it in she the road was planned, or the government was too lazy/broke to fix obvious problems.

I thought of that yesterday when they turned on these new meters on I5 that seemed to do nothing.

One thing the DoT could do to assuage our negative feelings is put the methodology out in the public after it's implemented. Show how the sausage is made, if you will. Then again, it's probably people who would otherwise be predisposed to looking up how a simulation would run in this case that would be less likely to whine in the first place. So it probably doesn't really matter, other than on principle.

One thing the DoT could do to assuage our negative feelings is put the methodology out in the public after it's implemented.

It likely is public - there may be an environmental assessment (EA), Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or Environmental Impact Report (EIR) that will have an appendix containing the detailed traffic engineering study behind the metering. It's probably based on MUTCD guidelines [0].

Assuming you are referring to I-5 through CA, a Google search for "california ramp metering study" brings up a lot of studies and documentations sponsored by Caltrans.

[0] http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part4/part4i.htm

I'm actually referring to I-5 up here south of Seattle...right outside JBLM where I work. I have looked and unfortunately I haven't found anything. I did find a bunch of stuff that talks about ramp metering at large, but nothing specifically about the on-ramps here that just got metered.

Anecdotally, traffic inside JBLM has been significantly negatively effected because of this. I read in another comment that ramp metering speeds up traffic on the freeway...I really hope that's the case. Because it's really annoying to sit in my car while trying to leave and I hope I get to make that up on the aggregate. And to my earlier point...it isn't immediately clear that I will...because the methodology isn't open.

Why not open-source the methodology before it's implemented? They might get good feedback.

Are you talking about ramp metering?

If so, I was involved in a trial in Melbourne, Australia on a major highway there. In peak times, it can actually improve travel times by 50% and massively reduce congestion around the choke points you get just ahead of on-ramps.

It depends on what algorithm they use to determine timing though - this was a coordinated, dynamic algorithm, but sometimes they are just manually set which isn't as good.

I am! Do you have any datasets that you can release that I could look at? Or what the algorithms looked like? I'd love to be armed with some real facts the next time I get annoyed or my coworkers start complaining.

Here's the best one I can find: http://ersilia.net/origami/docs/vicroads.pdf

Up to 58% increase in average speed in one test, which was probably the figure I was thinking of (it was a while ago!)

I was thinking of https://xkcd.com/793/ Just jump in and fix it, can't take more than an afternoon right?

I think this would work well, but my gut reaction is that a passenger who is already annoyed at a late bus watching that bus just go right on by would be unappreciative.

A couple of tweaks that might make it less problematic for you:

1. Bus #1's signage updates so it doesn't show the bus route externally; it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by

2. Bus #2 (which is ostensibly no more than half a block away) has an N% discount for passengers (where N increases according to demand).

3. When Bus #1 gets "bumped" (metaphorically) by Bus #2, bus company regulations have it pull over and let Bus #2 pass it; therefore, the less-crowded Bus #2 can pick up more of the waiting passengers. [Edit: Oh; I see this has been covered in some other comments already.]

> it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by

It's not always so easy to trick people. For me, in SF, there are often bus stops with either only one bus line, or with multiple bus lines that will all take me to my destination.

"Out of Service" or "Charter".

Getting caught lying will make it even worse.

Technically, the signage is correct ;-)

> 1. Bus #1's signage updates so it doesn't show the bus route externally; it's no longer "your" bus, so you aren't upset when it passes by

They do that sometimes here in Brisbane, Australia.

Discount is a great idea - but if passengers are regular riders (monthly bus pass) - it's not clear what you can offer them for their annoyance.

Offer them taxi tickets :)

Perhaps changing the signage to something like "Bus Full - Next bus in 5 min"

Just tell me the next bus is just a minute or 2 away and much less crowded.

This happens in Japan too. The first bus is full with people packed in leaning on each other. Wait 20 seconds the next bus is empty and I get a seat.

The problem is I don't know they are bunched when the first bus arrives. I assume that's the only bus and that if don't get on it will be another 10 - 20 mins for the next bus. If I knew the busses were bunched I'd be more than happy to take the less crowded bus.

until they realize that there is a bus coming within 5 minutes? Also, this means that the bus is less likely to be late.

It may be that one day, you'll be standing at a bus stop with no shelter in 46c weather with no water or hat waiting for a bus that is 20 minutes late.

If and when that happens, you'll understand why I once hit the external emergency door override for a bus that tried to drop off a passenger but not let me on, and gave the busdriver an earful when he tried to close the door on my arm.

Not everyone lives in temperate zones.

Maybe you should call emergency services when you are caught out unprepared for the weather...

Another person who lives in a temperate climate. Let me break it down further, oh inexperienced one:

Unless you're a pensioner, that's not going to kill you, but any person who would willingly leave another person in that situation for even 5 minutes is an arsehole.

Then surely any person who delays the bus for many future passengers down the route is a much bigger arsehole?

Yeah. That'd be the bus driver. The guy responsible for driving the bus on time.

Isn't that what he was trying to do before you forced yourself aboard?

A bus drivers job is to pick up all passengers on the route and keep the bus running on time simultaneously.

Are you really such a moron that you can't figure out for yourself that a bus service that can't do both is worthless?

> Are you really such a moron

There's no need for that.

I certainly wouldn't blame the bus for not being prepared for the weather.

The weather is omnipresent, my northern friend, and when the buses are running on time it's not a problem to only bring a 600mil coke bottle of water with you, but you will go through that if the bus goes AWOL.

It's not practical to bring a camelback everywhere in case the bus decides not to show up, but I don't expect you to know that, since you clearly turn the air-conditioning on at 25.

Buses in LA actually do this. It says "Discharge Only".

If you ever waited for a bus in LA for an hour only to see it come and not stop for you, you would feel differently. Even though a lot of people take the bus in LA, buses aren't really the cities priority.

It has considerably improved in the 10 years I've had to take them but they are hardly reliable. You cannot take the bus without planning ahead.

For the bunching problem, we can't simply add more buses because they will end up being empty. We can't have too few because it already feels like there are too few.

I really hope there is a solution in the near future.

>I really hope there is a solution in the near future.

Some time ago I've read about an experiment (in one of Scandinavian countries I believe) involving buses with the routes completely depending on the passenger's needs (via mobile apps). Unfortunately can't find the link right now.

I believe its Kutsuplus: https://kutsuplus.fi/home

It would be quite neat if you could toggle this behavior on or off in this simulation, to see it in action.

Buses in Vancouver already do this (or at least they did a few years ago), they'll switch the sign to "BUS FOLLOWING" or "DROP OFF ONLY".

buses in san francisco do this. i have no idea how well it's working for them, but as a passenger, it's pretty frustrating to see your bus pass you by when you've been waiting 10 minutes already.

I regularly use Muni line 29. At least a couple of times a week, commute hour buses do this. Usually it works out okay for two reasons:

1. The next bus is right around the corner or I have my transit App to give an idea about delay if I cannot see the next bus yet. generally the delay is of teh order of 2 ~ 3 minutes.

2. The next bus is also has less people and the journey is thus more pleasant.

Things do screw up at times though. This weekend, a driver did not stop and indicated that there was a bus following him. The App showed the next bus was 20 minutes behind. I had to catch a different bus after that. I hope this does not happen on working days.

I don't think they're implementing this idea. The only times I have seen a bus fly by a stop is when the bus is clearly completely full.

The Metrobuses in Washington do this at times, though sometimes it is because there really is no room left.

Clearly you have not ridden the buses in LA then. I did this for 2 years to get about the westside. Even imagining that people would read the sign, or know the English language clearly enough to do so, is laughable. The average bus rider in my small experience (not talking about the actual average, that I do not know) is typically Spanish speaking, is crazy drugged out/drunk, or will not care no matter how much you try to reason with them. I kid you not, I have seen on more than one occasion a homeless person heave feces at the buses that pass them by when they are too full to legally allow more people on. Maybe not most, but enough of the population of passengers are too nuts to reason with that trying to enforce a disembark only policy will lead to deaths of drivers (not that the drivers are all that different than passengers either, you cannot believe that some are considered qualified to drive by any rational person). At the end of the day, trying to deal with real people leads to unreal problems.

> At the end of the day, trying to deal with real people leads to unreal problems.

It's funny you say this, because you've managed to reduce real people (transit riders) into an unreal stereotype ("crazy drugged out/drunk").

Post the sign in Spanish and English, then?

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