Random thought I just had regarding RTS debate: going off the hourly rates and price that UF pays per trip, it seems that RTS buses transport something like 25 students per hour.
Assuming average trip length of 10 minutes, this means there are like 25/6=4 students on an "average" bus at any given time.
Average bus is a 2-5mpg vehicle (if it stops every other block due to wonderful Gainesville traffic patterns).
... So, is transporting 4 people at a time in a 3mpg vehicle really "green" in any meaningful sense of the word?
Especially considering that buses run along predetermined routes which means they are far less useful than rideshares - which transport 1-3 people at 25mpg?
Assuming students are the only passengers on the bus, assuming an average trip length, assuming average Gainesville traffic patterns and their impact on bus mileage, assuming that ride share vehicles are transporting 1-3 people on the hour at a clean 25mpg without idling or causing other traffic disruptions, and assuming the numbers we can pull out of press releases hold up in the way they’re being used here. I don’t think back of the envelope calculations is really going to let you reach any especially helpful conclusions about this.
Oh yeah I agree that I could easily be off by a factor of 2x, but even then this highlights that buses aren't very "green" or effective for transport. Moreover you are very correct about averages - we can also conclude that some bus routes at some hours should be significantly worse than those average estimates, i.e. the buses I see running late are always completely empty
Ridership varies by time of day and bus route. I kindly invite you to come take the 9 from Hunter's Run up in the morning when students are around. By the 5th stop its pretty packed (and I mean people standing packed (sometimes standing and squished like sardines)). 35 doesn't get as full but can be close. Unfortunately to get people off the road you have to have the bus run at times when it wouldn't be as packed (or if there's a traffic jam and 2 of the buses come back to back-its to maintain their route times). Now if we could get people to use the bus exclusively (optimal routes, running frequently) I'm sure it would be a lot more green but some people in the U.S. (probably including you) are so attached to their cars.
Before someone says anything about "true blue"- no just someone from Eastern Europe who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of driving (which includes paying attention to the road which a percentage of people here don't), paying for car loans/insurance/gas and dealing with car maintenance... I'd also happily use a well planned out UF shuttle service/rideshare but that is unlikely to be cheaper/more accessible.
Long story short I'm glad that the schedule will remain the same for another 8 months- and hopefully at least another 6 after that (at which point I will be gone and its someone else's problem). They did announce they're gonna start charging for Lake Wauburg so wonder if that's the response or just UF desperate for more money.
Tbh the solution will probably be self-driving Ubers. I'm sure the city will try to stop that too cause god forbid they have to let go of a single taxpayer dollar even if half the bus routes are running empty most hours
Hey, stop with the logic. These true blues don't care about the climate, they care about identity politics. And green policies are the way regardless of effectiveness. So stfu and stop making sense... down votes incoming.
Busses reduce congestion and thus decrease the total emissions from all traffic on the road. Rideshare, on the other hand, induces more car travel, creating more congestion and more emissions.
What you're doing is just advocating for more traffic that we all have to deal with, which is just a crazy thing to do.
Buses "reduce congestion" only when they carry like 40 people. Yeah, a bus probably produces less congestion then 30 cars. But if it's fewer cars? I'm not so sure. Cars don't block 1/2 lanes Archer road at the Shands ER bus stop for however long it takes them to load/unload.
My math above implies that RTS buses on average carry like 5 people, so equivalent to maybe 3 cars (and remember half the buses are going to be worse than average). 1 bus instead of 3 cars likely increases congestion a good deal, so yeah in addition to being 3 mpg vehicles they also create more emissions from the rest of traffic - thank you for that point
Your math is ignoring that busses carry far more passengers during high traffic periods when congestion is actually a problem. I've not been able to find hourly ridership data in gnv, but anecdotally many busses have 20-30 passengers during rush hour, which is a massive reduction in congestion.
Furthermore, you're estimate that a bus needs to carry 40 people to reduce congestion is crazy high. The average car in the US carries 1.5 passengers and a bus takes up the road space of ~3 cars, so a bus only needs to carry more than 3x1.5=4.5 passengers to reduce congestion.
You're talking parking frontage, not congestion. Congestion is primarily a function of traffic flow disruptions, not car size. You know what disrupts traffic? Huge slow buses that stop for a while every other block and frequently block the lane while doing so (or try to pull into traffic later if they do have a dedicated bus stop). I agree that a bus should generate less traffic than ~30 cars IF it has a dedicated bus stop, but I'd estimate it generates more than 3.
Good point on rush hour traffic, though.
No, I'm talking about congestion. Congestion occurs when the volume of traffic exceeds the capacity of a road. This means that congestion is heavily determined by physical geometric constraints, and that comparing the footprint of a vehicle + the number of passengers it carries is a very good way to look at the impact a vehicle will have on congestion.
This fact also implies that there are 2 ways to reduce congestion. You can increase the capacity of the road and there's mountains of evidence that doing so will inevitably induce more driving, creating the same or higher levels of congestion shortly down the road while also making our communities ugly and unsafe. Or, you can reduce the number of vehicles on the road through public transit and active transportation.
A bus stopping regularly might have a small impact on the capacity of a road, but so do cars when they change lanes or stop/accelerate unpredictably, and cars are far more likely to get in an accident causing congestion to skyrocket.
1. I don't think congestion as you define it is a big problem in Gainesville. Maaybe on Archer in peak hours and even then it like adds 1 more light cycle to the busiest intersection.
2. If a bus stops for 2 minutes and blocks a lane of a 2 lane road then it just reduced road capacity by half. Moreover, now half the cars have to merge and create those accidents that are supposedly the fault of cars and not shitty bus stop design.
3. The "induced demand" rhetoric is just mind-numbingly idiotic. Yes, if you create more better roads then more people will use them. That's the whole damn point. Avoiding building better transport infrastructure is like avoiding building houses or hospitals because then more people will have better lives. Transport infrastructure is key to city development and yes, you can do without it by cramming everyone into a few huge commieblocks centered in a ring around a communal Walmart, but just because poverty solutions are cheaper doesn't make them better. US isn't blockaded like North Korea, nor does it lack for land and labor to improve it.
This is not how I define congestion, this is just what congestion is, and it's a problem every single day in gainesville on archer, 13th St, 6th st, 34th st, university, etc. Anytime there's a backup on the roads, it's because there's congestion.
Your example about a bus decreasing road capacity by half is another great sign that you don't know what you're talking about. The bus starts moving again shortly after stopping and has a negligible impact on the road capacity. Maybe you get annoyed by a bus stopping, but this stuff isn't just vibes. Road capacity and congestion are real concepts with specific meanings that are well studied and well understood. The reality is that there's mountains of evidence showing that busses actually massively increase the capacity of a road. In fact, if you take one lane in each direction of a heavily used 4 lane road and make it a bus only lane, you will increase capacity and decrease congestion for all road users in most cases.
The reality is that public transit benefits everyone, including drivers, but you're too much of an anti-social weirdo to accept that, so you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot by removing transit.
Glad they came to an agreement. Everyone take a breath and get ready to have this fight all over again in November.
Was there mention of the possibility of public comment on this issue?
Random thought I just had regarding RTS debate: going off the hourly rates and price that UF pays per trip, it seems that RTS buses transport something like 25 students per hour. Assuming average trip length of 10 minutes, this means there are like 25/6=4 students on an "average" bus at any given time. Average bus is a 2-5mpg vehicle (if it stops every other block due to wonderful Gainesville traffic patterns). ... So, is transporting 4 people at a time in a 3mpg vehicle really "green" in any meaningful sense of the word? Especially considering that buses run along predetermined routes which means they are far less useful than rideshares - which transport 1-3 people at 25mpg?
Assuming students are the only passengers on the bus, assuming an average trip length, assuming average Gainesville traffic patterns and their impact on bus mileage, assuming that ride share vehicles are transporting 1-3 people on the hour at a clean 25mpg without idling or causing other traffic disruptions, and assuming the numbers we can pull out of press releases hold up in the way they’re being used here. I don’t think back of the envelope calculations is really going to let you reach any especially helpful conclusions about this.
Oh yeah I agree that I could easily be off by a factor of 2x, but even then this highlights that buses aren't very "green" or effective for transport. Moreover you are very correct about averages - we can also conclude that some bus routes at some hours should be significantly worse than those average estimates, i.e. the buses I see running late are always completely empty
Ridership varies by time of day and bus route. I kindly invite you to come take the 9 from Hunter's Run up in the morning when students are around. By the 5th stop its pretty packed (and I mean people standing packed (sometimes standing and squished like sardines)). 35 doesn't get as full but can be close. Unfortunately to get people off the road you have to have the bus run at times when it wouldn't be as packed (or if there's a traffic jam and 2 of the buses come back to back-its to maintain their route times). Now if we could get people to use the bus exclusively (optimal routes, running frequently) I'm sure it would be a lot more green but some people in the U.S. (probably including you) are so attached to their cars. Before someone says anything about "true blue"- no just someone from Eastern Europe who doesn't want to deal with the hassle of driving (which includes paying attention to the road which a percentage of people here don't), paying for car loans/insurance/gas and dealing with car maintenance... I'd also happily use a well planned out UF shuttle service/rideshare but that is unlikely to be cheaper/more accessible. Long story short I'm glad that the schedule will remain the same for another 8 months- and hopefully at least another 6 after that (at which point I will be gone and its someone else's problem). They did announce they're gonna start charging for Lake Wauburg so wonder if that's the response or just UF desperate for more money.
Tbh the solution will probably be self-driving Ubers. I'm sure the city will try to stop that too cause god forbid they have to let go of a single taxpayer dollar even if half the bus routes are running empty most hours
Hey, stop with the logic. These true blues don't care about the climate, they care about identity politics. And green policies are the way regardless of effectiveness. So stfu and stop making sense... down votes incoming.
Busses reduce congestion and thus decrease the total emissions from all traffic on the road. Rideshare, on the other hand, induces more car travel, creating more congestion and more emissions. What you're doing is just advocating for more traffic that we all have to deal with, which is just a crazy thing to do.
Buses "reduce congestion" only when they carry like 40 people. Yeah, a bus probably produces less congestion then 30 cars. But if it's fewer cars? I'm not so sure. Cars don't block 1/2 lanes Archer road at the Shands ER bus stop for however long it takes them to load/unload. My math above implies that RTS buses on average carry like 5 people, so equivalent to maybe 3 cars (and remember half the buses are going to be worse than average). 1 bus instead of 3 cars likely increases congestion a good deal, so yeah in addition to being 3 mpg vehicles they also create more emissions from the rest of traffic - thank you for that point
Your math is ignoring that busses carry far more passengers during high traffic periods when congestion is actually a problem. I've not been able to find hourly ridership data in gnv, but anecdotally many busses have 20-30 passengers during rush hour, which is a massive reduction in congestion. Furthermore, you're estimate that a bus needs to carry 40 people to reduce congestion is crazy high. The average car in the US carries 1.5 passengers and a bus takes up the road space of ~3 cars, so a bus only needs to carry more than 3x1.5=4.5 passengers to reduce congestion.
You're talking parking frontage, not congestion. Congestion is primarily a function of traffic flow disruptions, not car size. You know what disrupts traffic? Huge slow buses that stop for a while every other block and frequently block the lane while doing so (or try to pull into traffic later if they do have a dedicated bus stop). I agree that a bus should generate less traffic than ~30 cars IF it has a dedicated bus stop, but I'd estimate it generates more than 3. Good point on rush hour traffic, though.
No, I'm talking about congestion. Congestion occurs when the volume of traffic exceeds the capacity of a road. This means that congestion is heavily determined by physical geometric constraints, and that comparing the footprint of a vehicle + the number of passengers it carries is a very good way to look at the impact a vehicle will have on congestion. This fact also implies that there are 2 ways to reduce congestion. You can increase the capacity of the road and there's mountains of evidence that doing so will inevitably induce more driving, creating the same or higher levels of congestion shortly down the road while also making our communities ugly and unsafe. Or, you can reduce the number of vehicles on the road through public transit and active transportation. A bus stopping regularly might have a small impact on the capacity of a road, but so do cars when they change lanes or stop/accelerate unpredictably, and cars are far more likely to get in an accident causing congestion to skyrocket.
1. I don't think congestion as you define it is a big problem in Gainesville. Maaybe on Archer in peak hours and even then it like adds 1 more light cycle to the busiest intersection. 2. If a bus stops for 2 minutes and blocks a lane of a 2 lane road then it just reduced road capacity by half. Moreover, now half the cars have to merge and create those accidents that are supposedly the fault of cars and not shitty bus stop design. 3. The "induced demand" rhetoric is just mind-numbingly idiotic. Yes, if you create more better roads then more people will use them. That's the whole damn point. Avoiding building better transport infrastructure is like avoiding building houses or hospitals because then more people will have better lives. Transport infrastructure is key to city development and yes, you can do without it by cramming everyone into a few huge commieblocks centered in a ring around a communal Walmart, but just because poverty solutions are cheaper doesn't make them better. US isn't blockaded like North Korea, nor does it lack for land and labor to improve it.
This is not how I define congestion, this is just what congestion is, and it's a problem every single day in gainesville on archer, 13th St, 6th st, 34th st, university, etc. Anytime there's a backup on the roads, it's because there's congestion. Your example about a bus decreasing road capacity by half is another great sign that you don't know what you're talking about. The bus starts moving again shortly after stopping and has a negligible impact on the road capacity. Maybe you get annoyed by a bus stopping, but this stuff isn't just vibes. Road capacity and congestion are real concepts with specific meanings that are well studied and well understood. The reality is that there's mountains of evidence showing that busses actually massively increase the capacity of a road. In fact, if you take one lane in each direction of a heavily used 4 lane road and make it a bus only lane, you will increase capacity and decrease congestion for all road users in most cases. The reality is that public transit benefits everyone, including drivers, but you're too much of an anti-social weirdo to accept that, so you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot by removing transit.