Adjusting the frequency of bus routes can also help agencies allocate their fleets better. I.e if a route is too overcrowded, a transfer of fleets from other less crowded routes can help optimize the service better!
A combination of on-demand and peak time service can also be an option for areas with relatively low population density. Here many "schoolbus lines" (which serve even the smallest village you could find) continue during the holidays, because they also used by a lot of commuters; however only with one bus into the city every morning (and maybe one back, but there demand is usually more spread). If you need another time: There comes the on-demand bus.
Yep! I have seen conventional bus routes running at certain times of the day, and then on-demand for the rest of the service hours. Some studies of transit in small communities said that it is actually better for both the agency and the riders, which is a win-win situation!
My experience with on-demand has been super lackluster. I almost always would take a Taxi or Uber then have to wait for an on-demand option and try to understand who to use the app.
Thanks for sharing! This is when the demand is bigger than supply or the service area is larger than the service level that the buses can provide! It's a complex math problem that agencies have to calculate!
@@morethantransitt Certainly, but I suppose my point is that even though I'm a very transit positive person (taking busses in Sherwood Park back when I lived there), on-demand (at least Sherwood Park's implementation) was annoying and confusing enough as a customer that I opted to use Uber instead (something I typically avoid like the plague). I can't imagine how difficult on-demand may be for seniors or tech illiterate people, when transit is meant to be super easy to use. As a reference point, Sherwood Park took its 3 night bus routes and instead transformed them into on-demand route(s) after certain hours, and by doing so I was unable to reliably use transit anymore to get home from school anymore. So, while I think there is a lot of potential for on-demand (and I certainly hope it keeps improving), I'd personally push back against classifying it as the "first tier" of providing transit when it feels so ... broken. I dislike the idea of classifying it as a viable form of transit mainly because I worry that more and more cities will decide to downgrade decent transit lines into on-demand, which will only drive transit use down in a city more. Anyways, I hope my point makes any sense, and I enjoyed the video otherwise.
Right, here's my general issue with busses. In a city, we'll always want to aim for less noise, and generally towards human powered transport (such as bikes or e-bikes). Most European cities are very dense, with already narrow double (single each way) streets, pedestrian paths and generally no space for bike paths. If we want to aim for a city that is cycleable, as should be our goal, noisy, dangerous busses that require even wider lanes in high frequency will not make space for bikes, but make cycling even more dangerous and unattractive. And no, electric busses wont solve that issue as they're even heavier, making them even more dangerous and also increasing tyre noise and wear. No matter how you twist and turn this, busses will always clash with good cycle infrastructure in dense cities. I propose a different solution to this. Microcars x Trams. Slow, 30kmh vehicles that fall under the L6e category of vehicles (450kg max), with an additional width restriction of 120cm. These vehicles would pose very little danger to bikes as they are traveling at human speed. Gained space can be used for greened rail or even more bike paths. The vehicles would use less energy than a bus per person, while being safer for pedestrians and cyclists, taking up very little space and being an immediate door to door transport system. This reduction in car luxury will ultimately also lead to more people switching to bikes as they'll be faster to get around with due to a superior bike over car infrastructure. Trams would still exist as bulk transport, with greened rails to help city climate. We'll never succeed when wanting to take away the opportunities cars provide, therefor we should rather impose limits to those vehicles which don't take away from the advantages, but don't have the many disadvantages of large cars. Additionally, high frequency bus traffic takes up more space than cars regarding width, which is what we're truly short of in dense cities. Narrowing lanes and creating green space and more bike lanes in cities is far more desirable.
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ORzNZUeUHAM/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey you know that climate and transit guy has a point!
And he picked a great location as well!
Fantastic Video! SUPER LIKE!
Thanks!
Adjusting the frequency of bus routes can also help agencies allocate their fleets better. I.e if a route is too overcrowded, a transfer of fleets from other less crowded routes can help optimize the service better!
A combination of on-demand and peak time service can also be an option for areas with relatively low population density. Here many "schoolbus lines" (which serve even the smallest village you could find) continue during the holidays, because they also used by a lot of commuters; however only with one bus into the city every morning (and maybe one back, but there demand is usually more spread). If you need another time: There comes the on-demand bus.
Yep! I have seen conventional bus routes running at certain times of the day, and then on-demand for the rest of the service hours. Some studies of transit in small communities said that it is actually better for both the agency and the riders, which is a win-win situation!
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
My experience with on-demand has been super lackluster. I almost always would take a Taxi or Uber then have to wait for an on-demand option and try to understand who to use the app.
Thanks for sharing! This is when the demand is bigger than supply or the service area is larger than the service level that the buses can provide! It's a complex math problem that agencies have to calculate!
@@morethantransitt Certainly, but I suppose my point is that even though I'm a very transit positive person (taking busses in Sherwood Park back when I lived there), on-demand (at least Sherwood Park's implementation) was annoying and confusing enough as a customer that I opted to use Uber instead (something I typically avoid like the plague). I can't imagine how difficult on-demand may be for seniors or tech illiterate people, when transit is meant to be super easy to use. As a reference point, Sherwood Park took its 3 night bus routes and instead transformed them into on-demand route(s) after certain hours, and by doing so I was unable to reliably use transit anymore to get home from school anymore.
So, while I think there is a lot of potential for on-demand (and I certainly hope it keeps improving), I'd personally push back against classifying it as the "first tier" of providing transit when it feels so ... broken. I dislike the idea of classifying it as a viable form of transit mainly because I worry that more and more cities will decide to downgrade decent transit lines into on-demand, which will only drive transit use down in a city more.
Anyways, I hope my point makes any sense, and I enjoyed the video otherwise.
Right, here's my general issue with busses. In a city, we'll always want to aim for less noise, and generally towards human powered transport (such as bikes or e-bikes). Most European cities are very dense, with already narrow double (single each way) streets, pedestrian paths and generally no space for bike paths. If we want to aim for a city that is cycleable, as should be our goal, noisy, dangerous busses that require even wider lanes in high frequency will not make space for bikes, but make cycling even more dangerous and unattractive. And no, electric busses wont solve that issue as they're even heavier, making them even more dangerous and also increasing tyre noise and wear. No matter how you twist and turn this, busses will always clash with good cycle infrastructure in dense cities.
I propose a different solution to this. Microcars x Trams. Slow, 30kmh vehicles that fall under the L6e category of vehicles (450kg max), with an additional width restriction of 120cm. These vehicles would pose very little danger to bikes as they are traveling at human speed. Gained space can be used for greened rail or even more bike paths.
The vehicles would use less energy than a bus per person, while being safer for pedestrians and cyclists, taking up very little space and being an immediate door to door transport system. This reduction in car luxury will ultimately also lead to more people switching to bikes as they'll be faster to get around with due to a superior bike over car infrastructure. Trams would still exist as bulk transport, with greened rails to help city climate.
We'll never succeed when wanting to take away the opportunities cars provide, therefor we should rather impose limits to those vehicles which don't take away from the advantages, but don't have the many disadvantages of large cars. Additionally, high frequency bus traffic takes up more space than cars regarding width, which is what we're truly short of in dense cities. Narrowing lanes and creating green space and more bike lanes in cities is far more desirable.
The microcars part is a great change to the legislation! We need more incentives to make them available in North America!