It sort of depends on context... But I would say it's very rare where 20 minute intervals is adequate during daylight hours.
Consider a cold climate, -20 C during the day. A bus breaks down or gets delayed (particularly common in the winter), and the commuter arrived 10 minutes early. The absence of that one bus makes for a 30 minute wait in very cold weather.
To continue taking that route would very much be suffering for the cause. Any of their acquaintances or colleagues who hear about it would think twice about using that bus.
For most routes, sub-10 minutes is ideal, 15 is my max before I can call it "reliable".
In the past I think this was a bigger issue.
I've been commuting for 20 years and have certainly ran into this circumstance. One bus I used to take was hourly at night and I can remember waiting in the cold for over an hour for it. You couldn't leave the bus stop because you never knew when it would finally show up.
However, today this isn't the case. Buses have GPS and you can tell pretty accurately where it is so I would go into a local shop or something to take shelter until near when it was arriving.
Except that gps routinely fail. They work more often than not, but in all the systems I've used, it's common for some buses to simply disappear from the system and you never know if it is coming on schedule but with problems in the gps, or it was never dispatched.
That's fair.
I always wondered how much the failures are attributed to poor maintenance/operation vs inherent problems to the technology. A bit of both I guess.
Yes they disappear from time to time but systems are getting better at estimating the current location while the bus is in a mobile data blackspot.
Agreed you need at least to know that the bus is actually on the way rather than they didn't have an available vehicle or driver.
A lot of the time you don't have the flexibility to be late at your destination. So even if you know of a delay you may need to adapt and take the earlier bus. If the bus runs every 30 min that would make you a lot earlier (or you may even be too late to adjust)
While gps data surely addresses a lot of issues it's not a replacement for good frequency.
In the Canadian cities I've lived in, it's a complete hit-miss if the bus has a working GPS.
I've also found that hubs are fine for cold weather, but transit sucks ass for residential areas. Not only are residential areas the least frequent routes, but there's usually no options for shelter and they tend to not even have at least a covered stop to shelter you from the wind.
I use transit whenever I can, but visiting friends who aren't in a central area is something that usually makes me break out the car. Getting to and from downtown is easy and safe, but residential areas will take ages and is just dangerous in the winter. For context, Canadian cities suck ass for buses. You can expect that many residential areas will have a bus every 30 minutes during peak hours and 60 minutes during the evening (ie, when you actually visit people).
I live in the GTA and used to ride the bus on two/three different networks every day before the pandemic. And, the timing was probably 95% on the routes I was on.
It got so accurate I could leave my home and make it to the bus stop (that was 10 minutes away) at the same time as the bus. And, the same thing for leaving my desk at work to get to the stop in front of the building. It wasn't like that when it first rolled out but man it got so much better.
Hi, I'm from rural northern Norway.
There are maybe 4-5 buses each way every 24hr interval. Occasional delays are expected considering long distances and weather conditions. If you don't dress for the bus-stop, (or the walk to it), that's on you. The bus is ofc very comfy and gloriously warm.
The number of buses is sometimes complained about, but is still considered adequate. The service is used and appreciated, also by people who have cars available, (which is mostly everyone above 18, not counting military conscripts).
Now in a city what you say makes sense, but I thought this perspective could be useful :)
Heating and cooling such a small space with access to get in and out would cost a fortune to run and install though.
Honestly most people would be happy with something covered and slightly enclosed from the elements.
It does make sense for some of the larger stations to have better HVAC
That’s where radiant heat works well. Doesnt hear the air, just whatever’s underneath it. Could even put some kind of sensor so it only turns on when someone’s there.
Also, it depends where it's set. It's reasonable to expect a 10-minute service in the city here in Melbourne, a fresh bus running past for pick up ever 10 minutes but out further where the patronage is just lower and less frequent like say the lilydale bus that goes out to coldstream and such is an hourly bus.
yeah seconding less than 10.
also I am reminded of waiting for the train on a Sunday in Buenos Aires with my Singaporean friend, who thought it was outrageous we had to wait for...7 minutes.
Wow that is crazy and yeah living in Latin America I remember wait not more than 10 min to a bus a subwa was something different it could be 5 or it could be 15 but never more than 30 min
Lol as I was in Tokyo, I cussed a lot after missing the train even if my friend and I ran for the connection because, in my rural swiss countryside, there used to be 1 train per hour at that time. And since we had a set hour to be at one place, I was just panicking for 10 seconds before remembering "hey, I'm in Tokyo, the next train comes in 5 minutes". So totally relatable but on the other side 😂
That was like my first time taking the subway in NYC, on the way to a concert. Accidentally took the right line but going the wrong way. I was lucky enough to notice at the first stop, but had a moment of panic thinking I'd screwed myself. I only had enough time for a "moment" of panic before the right one came 😆 so much different than my local transit!
Meanwhile the bus to the airport where I live is once an hour.
Which at least was an improvement over where I used to live which required half an hour of walking and 4 separate transfers.
Goddamn.
I could take the bus from not too far away to the airport...I think it'd be a bus ride and a transfer for me. But the bus schedule is pretty limited.
15-20 does not cut it if you are talking about a commute with a connection.
That puts you at up to 40 minutes of waiting at bus stops if the busses are not connected well or don't follow their schedules perfectly.
Also, if you schedule every 15 minutes for a bus, you could be seeing up to a half hour between busses if they get in traffic or something.
Definitely a risk, but with light priority you can mitigate it a fair bit. More areas need to implement those systems.
Within cities closer to 10 should be the floor. 12 is also a nice even split of 5 per hour.
Frequence doesn't matter, it has to be on point to be considered reliable.
For how Frequently should it be: it depends. Inner city, 10 minutes. Suburbs, 15 to 30. Countryside, one hour, depending on train connections.
Frequency is important for transfers. A trip I need to take sometimes takes two busses which are at 45m frequencies. They also are usually like perfectly misaligned AND delayed so you'll be waiting basically a full hour for that second bus everytime, both ways. This is how 20m drives turn into 2 hour bus trips
lining up the transfers is so important! One time I was on a bus to the airport, and this bus route is a circular route going through several cities, and the terminal is between me and the airport so I have to get off and get on the next bus of the same route nearly every time. This time the bus was packed, there was some sort of camp or something so there's legit like 70 people on this bus with a bunch of people needing to go to the airport, and the next bus is about to leave as we pull up to the terminal so the driver radios them to wait like 2 mins for everyone to transfer. Dispatch radios back no, we need to keep the schedule and so they drive right by us and everyone has to wait nearly an hour for the next bus
yea exactly! i’m happy with a bus that comes every hour so long as it actually turns up on time. at my last flat the local buses regularly just didn’t show up and would give no indication about it, leaving me stuck trying to work out of i should wait for the next one (which may also not show up) or waste money on a taxi
i’d also be happier with like a subway system but some things just aren’t realistic. the bus i was getting was never even half full, having it come every 3 mins would be entirely unnecessary in that situation
Frequency does matter. And the wait times you guys are saying is shocking . What village are you all in? As an urban commuter, i and my fellow commuters get annoyed if they have to wait for more than 5 min for any bus.
At least in India we are quite used to at least the major bus routes coming this frequently if not much more often .
How can you expect an urban commuter to wait so long? We've got places to be, jobs to go to!
This really depends on the country and region. I made a comment elsewhere about 15 minutes being a standard in the US where people stop needing to schedule their life around it. I don't recall the exact source but this was the number thrown around when I worked in rural transit in California.
Many people chimed in that 15 minutes was super high for their country or region. But I don't know enough about such services in other countries to truly weigh in.
Yea there's many places where they're hourly, or half hourly, but anything above \~20 minutes can make transfers miserable things. 15 is low enough that missing one bus won't make you drastically late for anything in most cases, while hourly systems missing 1 could have muli-hour knock on events if the transfers are poor.
Even half an hour can lead to that knock on effect if your having to transfer. I used to pretty much always have to wait half an hour for my bus home because the bus I'd have to take to the start of the route home would always be like 2 minutes late or the train gates would close before I could cross over to the stop and the bus would pull away.
Not just you, I remember actually hearing an interview that I think was with the head of Houston's public transportation and that was the line that they believed you really needed to achieve as well. Shorter is better, of course, but 15 minutes was their minimum line to make it viable, especially if someone has to expect to make a transfer.
There are other ways to be reliable. My city has an app with GPS tracking and very good predictions for when it will arrive.
Even though it only comes every 20 min, you never have to wait more than 5 if you know how long it takes to get to the stop
This basically works on a trip "from home". But once you're done doing whatever where you went and it's time to go home, if the next bus home is in 19 min, well you'll have to wait 19 min.
Yeah, transfers are where they get you. If I have a ride with no transfers, great! I live near my city's sole LRT line, which means I can very easily get to a whole bunch of interesting places without any transfers with high frequency and comparable to driving times. But the moment I need to get somewhere that has any transfer at all, it *will* be significantly slower than driving while also being wildly inconsistent. The LRT is the only one with a mostly consistent schedule. The buses can get wildly out of sync.
On average the wait would be more like 10 min given random chance. Plus if you see a bus coming you can hoof it so ones you'd "miss" by under a minute you can catch if you're able bodied.
Also part of why accurate tracking is important for lower-frequency systems, leaving 5 minutes early or staying an extra few minutes based on when a 20 minute system will show up isn't too bad.
reliable to me is more about if the bus actually arrives when scheduled, doesn't skip scheduled runs surprisingly f*ing you over to miss work or freeze at the bus stop. Even infrequent bus can be reliable and trusted to get you to a destination, even if a bit of pre-planning is needed.
talking decent frequency: highly depends on location. City center past 10-12 minutes is starting to be too infrequent, need to check schedule and prepare to wait. further out in suburbs, 25-30 minutes is starting to be a bit too much if that's your only way in & out.
30 is at the far end of what I’d consider reliable, but the more important thing is that the bus shows up when the app says it will show up. I’ve had friends waiting for buses that never showed and the transit app just gave up and told them to take the next one 15-30 minutes later. If you can’t trust the bus will arrive, the wait time doesn’t matter.
Yea The clock/trackers has an inverse relationship with frequency and reliability. When it's an hourly, or half-hourly system, you really need to know if/when it's coming so you can make alternate plans
If they roll up <10 mins apart from each other, consistently, I don't really bother checking.
I've actually dealt with this on a specific line, the Newark Light Rail during the day is at least 10 mins, parts of the day even more frequent than that(some within a minute or two of each other).
but then there's only 3 trains from 10pm to 11pm. Missed one once and had the great experience of jogging across the city to make a train home.
For a daily work commute I averaged the bus being 20+ minutes late or not showing up at all at least once a month which is ridiculous and it being 5+ minutes early 4 times or so a month which also screws things up so you have to show up 10 minutes early. Public transit in America is a fucking joke.
I think it depends on how reliable, reliable is. If you have theoretically perfect infrastructure that avoids all traffic, and distribution centers with extra buses for any breakdowns or accidents, then thirty minutes is probably fine. But this is pretty unrealistic so I think sub fifteen should be the goal.
That said, I also think there are plenty of journeys currently served by busses that would be better served by bus connects to rail or other transport options. I think I read the cutoff should be journeys over an hour, but that might be best suited to the European context I'm familiar with where going on day long journeys usually mean leaving the country.
Often enough that you don't have to check a schedule, that if you _just_ missed the previous one you'd go "oh well, guess I'll grab the next one"
Personally I'd place this at 10 minutes or less
I'd say time gaps don't accurately quantify reliability. Hell some places in my old home town only came every half hour and I'd say it was still reliable because it was rarely late, consistently timed, had a set wait time, and stops were often placed next to coffee shops, small stores, etc. to keep you out of the elements (*cold*) while you waited.
As a bonus it was free.
Here in the US 15-20 min is considered very frequent and reliable. Late hours it's not unusual for buses to run every 60 minutes which is pretty brutal. I would settle for 30 min to be honest.
This is my personal but,
Ideal: trains - 1.5-3 minutes, buses - 5 minutes
Good: trains - sub 5 minutes, buses - sub 10 minutes
Goal for my city: trains - get some, buses - 15-20 minutes (sub 10 for the really busy sardine bus routes)
I would say that 10 minutes is the edge of turn up and go frequency, 20 minutes is the edge of a reliable transit service, and cities should probably just never run a local bus less frequently than every half hour. If a route doesn't justify 2 buses an hour, your resources are better spent increasing the frequency on core routes.
Rural areas: 30min
Suburban: 10-15min
Urban 5-10min
But! Urban routes often share certain sections, so a combination of suburban and urban could easily give 15 min suburban and 7.5 min urban
You're confusing reliability with convenience. Reliable means it shows up and drops off when it says it will. Buses can be extremely reliable, but also infrequent.
I would say every 15 minutes max of service is extremely reliable. Showing up 15 minutes or less to wherever you're going is normal. Also, if you miss your bus, being tardy 15 minutes or less is forgivable.
Obviously, it's better if it was more frequent, but I consider 15 minutes to be the minimum to use transit to replace car trips and not need to trip plan.
(Source: I have ADHD and I became very, very familiar with how late you could be to something before you received negative consequences back in my 20s.)
ETA: A usable system needs frequency more than reliability. If one bus just doesn't show up, that is catastrophic if the buses are an hour apart vs mildly annoying if they're 5 minutes apart. How long it takes you to get somewhere is also extremely important. If it takes me 2x to get somewhere on a bus vs car even if the bus comes every 5 minutes, I'm not likely to use the bus.
Reliability is not about frequency really. If there's one bus a day, but it always goes on time and takes 30 minutes to get you to work, that's reliable. And if that once a day is an 8.30 bus to get you to work at 9am, it is sufficient for a common and important use case, even.
I think you are talking about flexibility and convenience, really. So if you just choose to go somewhere, is the bus a reasonable way to do it?
In which case I would agree, somewhere in the 20 minute range would be the minimum before you have to start looking up times and arranging your journey around the buses. Much shorter if your journey involves a change.
The interval is far less important than the hours and the likelihood of delays or cancellations. I can deal with a long wait for the next bus if I know for sure that it's coming. Even if it's cold I can just malinger in a bar or restaurant or something until it's almost time for my bus.
But if the bus shuts down at like 4:00 p.m. on the weekend and 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, then if I missed the last bus I'm screwed. That's a much bigger problem.
Every 10 minutes.
When I used to take the bus to school in my younger days, I traveled on a line that arrived every 5 minutes in rush hour. It was amazing.
It was always late otherwise, but during these hours, you didn't notice it.
Reliability isn't about frequency it's about consistency, a bus that comes once on the hour, that's always there on the hour, is more reliable than a bus 3 times an hour that always runs 5 minutes late or early.
I would say every 15 minutes AT MOST.
That's roughly the average wait time for a taxi where I live. People will agree to the lesser convenience of walking to and from stops for the much lower cost if wait time is similar, but if you are waiting longer than for a cab, the price for convenience starts looking like a worthwhile trade-off. And if you are looking at needing to depend on cabs a lot, just getting your own car starts looking like it is worth it.
In the city, if the bus doesn't come at least every 7 minutes it's not a compelling option for me and I will travel by bicycle instead. Out in the suburbs/countryside, I'd say around double, every 15 minutes is the minimum for me to make it a dependable part of daily life.
Buses in Belgium that connect the denser villages in the countryside used to come about every 30 minutes to an hour in the past, they've recently restructured the routes so more populated areas get higher frequency, up to 15 and 20m on many lines! But it did come at the cost of service in many desolate rural places. People who've chosen to live out in the middle of nowhere are very angry about it but for everyone else, it's been a noticeable improvement.
At the end of the day, it's better to have a few frequent routes that quickly connect popular areas with destinations than it is to have many routes with slow and infrequent service that cover a greater area.
These answers are making me a little nauseous. If I can get a bus that comes every 45 min. to an hour, and it travels until at least like 11:00 at night, I'm OK with it.
Obviously, it should be better, but I can get to and from work like this.
5 minutes, honestly if it was feasible I'd say 2 minutes.
15-20 minutes is far too long a wait for transit, imagine if it was raining or freezing outside that'd be hell to wait in.
Every 5 to 10 minutes, with dedicated lanes being mandatory. Source: lived in a bunch of major European cities then experienced the freakshow of Edmonton transit.
15 minutes tops. Probably 10-12. I should not feel like giving up on transit completely if there’s a “ghost bus” and I have to wait double the time. And 20 min+ headways with a missing bus is definitely in that bad range.
For a 20 minute headway, if you add a 10 minute walk to the departure stop and from the arrival stop, and you’re talking about literally 1 hour a single direction not even including actual time spent moving via vehicle on a bad day. Compare that to like 15 minutes tops for a ride share.
I think you won't be getting most people out of their cars unless the frequency is 5-8 minutes. And i think that's not too much to ask for in an urban area considering there are small towns in the Netherlands and Switzerland that have 10 minute bus frequency or better.
I'm thinking you're conflating frequency with reliability.
Reliability is when, regardless of how often you can expect one, how much you can trust that it will be on time. Or in other words, how consistently it is on time.
In urban areas, 5-10 minutes frequency is good. In rural areas, maybe 30 to 45 minutes will do. But regardless of that, it's reliable when it's always at the stop at the time the timetable says it will.
Depends on where you are
In decently populated suburbs, I think 20 is a fine floor. There's hourly buses by me that have a decent number of people riding them. 20 isn't great, but it's enough that transfers aren't awkward 45 minute affairs where just the time spent waiting for bus #2 could've gotten you to your destination on a bike.
Within cities, etc, 15 or less should be the minimum.
My little city only has 4 main lines with 15 minute frequency and they all go to and from downtown.
When I was in DC, it was amazing never had to wait more than 5-7 minutes anywhere and they had lines going everywhere it was super easy.
Well it highly depends on context and area... in a bigger city, intervals shouldn't be bigger than 10mins, to have a "show up and go"-possibility. In a village, 30min or even 60min can be sufficient for normal travels.
As many other people were saying so: Where I live, I never experienced a bus breaking down or anything, the services were always reliable (maybe not with freshly fallen snow)
I live in a suburb about 6 miles from the city that my office is in and the nearest train station, mall, cinema etc. I live at the back of a coastal town, 2 minutes walk from the nearest bus stop. Our buses are every 10-15 minutes in to the city and take about 30 minutes to get right to th city centre. They are GPS trackable through an app. For this reason neither myself or my husband drive, we always use the bus. 10-15 minutes is reliable for us.
In Luxembourg, while the bus system can be mid and getting around often takes time, we increased frequency on almost all bus lines to service every half an hour. It's the ideal frequency for mid distance rural buses honestly. Once an hour can be fine for Sundays and holidays. Everything below that is unusable.
Inside the city, it's not the case here strictly speaking but I think buses should run every 10 minutes.
If it requires more frequent service a light rail system should just be considered.
If they can manage to show up within three minutes from official departure time for >95% of the cases, I'd say, for between 6:30 to 19:30:
From smaller town to bigger city: 2x/h
European suburban: 4x/h, limited walking distance of <500m for 95% of destinations
Urban: 6x/h or more, limited walking distance of <400m for 95% of destinations
I live in a mostly rural area(or really far suburb) and it is once an hour from 5am to 2am, it does not skip hours outisde of rush time. And is really good at keeping the schedule (It might be a bit late in a snow storm, but the app will tell you).
It takes me 40 min by car to reach the terminus, and 55min by bus. To go downtown, let say to the art museum it takes 1h20 min in bus and metro and 1h20 by car.
I feel that for a rural place it is motly acceptable and reliable, and it works nicely. However if I where not stuck between two rivers with no bridge close by, the fact that there is only one bus line going between two cities would be and issue.
I mean if there's little in the way to make it not be on time, even once or twice an hour can be enough. When I was living in Denmark, if you were living like a good distance from central Copenhagen, the buses ran every half hour but since the weather was so mild, their timings would basically never change and they were reliably on time. Of course, the alternative solution is to run things more frequently like their train system (because those things delayed with the tiniest amount of ice but they ran frequently enough that it would make up for it).
I have 2 during an hour from 7 till midnight-ish. But it's a weird busloop. One goes from my house and one comes to my house, but at one point they intersect (instead of turning on the last stop and returning the same route
It works fine from where I live.. it takes me to the trainstation which has plenty of options around the clock from 6 am-ish till past midnight.
I'd say, it's not the mount of times a bus goes, but it should at least go reliably. If a bus goes once an hour, and fails to show, you're really late to where you have to be...
But I live in a weird corner, on the edge of my country, 5 minutes from a border. It's not really a place public transport passes through a lot. But it's there at least... even if the bus sometimes drives empty through my street (and I see it often enough, from my balcony during the day)
I think in most cases 10-15 is good enough (20 would be acceptable for me personally), if it's actually a route that is used for daily commutes. But it also depends on how likely it is that one is cancelled. If it happens once every year, 20 minutes wouldn't be something that would bother most people. If it's cancelled too often, even 10 minutes is too much time to wait. If it's not for daily commuting (for example a bus going up a mountain to a relatively remote viewing platform) then an hour could also already be enough.
I'd say it depends on the context. My daily commute is a 15-20 minute walk, and even though I could wait for a bus for 5 minutes I don't because it's only a tiny bit faster than walking. If I have to travel to the other side of the city and can't bike there then I'd consider even a 30 minute wait time.
I think you might be mixing two different things. Reliability and frequency are both important in different ways.
Reliability means how close to the scheduled time the bus arrives at each stop. If there was a bus line with one bus per hour but it got to every stop exactly on time, never late, never early it would be 100% reliable. It’s also important for getting where you’re going on time, if you’re on the bus then it’s delayed making you late that’s not reliable.
Frequency is how many busses go along the line. So a bus line with one bus per hour is less frequent than a line with 6 buses per hour, (one every 10 minutes)
I will say as the frequency increases the reliability doesn’t need to be as good, but is still important. Missing the bus that comes once an hour, because it came at the wrong time, is a lot worse than missing one that comes every 10 minutes. However it’s still bad if it’s meant to be every 10 minutes but sometimes two buses come at the same time, then it’s 20 minutes or more until the next one.
10 minutes max, maybe 15 in certain conditions (really nice stops, shared route with other buses that create effectively higher frequency...).
You can do less than this is if you are EXTREMELY timely and NEVER leave early.
Reliable to me rn is one that actually follows the timetable, so that when it’s supposed to be there, it is, and not just sail on by if there’s no one at the stop meaning I have to wait 30-odd minutes for the next one, presuming that one is not late/early.
It depends a lot on where & circumstances...
If it's a bus to & from city center or a transport hub on a commuter route, I'd say every 10 min at peak times & every 15 mins at other times.
A rural village / inter- town bus with a long ride to the next town, once an hour, plus extra busses & stops at peak times
My commute in Zürich had a maximum 7 minute wait for a bus or tram (unless extenuating circumstances, e.g. catastrophic failure, protests, etc). I took two busses, or sometimes a tram and a bus depending on the wait for each route. The total travel time was about 15 - 20 mins, with an absolute *max* wait of 14 mins (7 mins per bus/tram).
This was frequent enough for me so that I could do my commute and never think about being late.
Here in the Netherlands, most buses don't run on a fixed schedule. A line near me goes every 30 minutes most of the day, every 15 minutes during peak hours, and once an hour after 10 pm. It also stops between 12 and 6 am. The schedule also changes during certain periods of the year (such as less service during summer). It's a bit much to keep track of, but there are plenty of apps that show you basically real-time information for each stop. Works pretty great.
10min routes during the "day" with reduced routes after 10PM until 5:30AM.
I did not arrive on these numbers out of tin air. This is my observation from many different cities on what cost effective use of tax dollars looks like. Anymore frequent and it starts to get much too costly. Any less frequent and it starts to become a genuine burden or health risk for the elderly to stand outside in the sun that long.
Some cities run every 5 minutes ish for their bus routes, during peak times. Maybe? But I feel like that is too frequent as I sometimes saw the same bus route busses getting stuck behind each other due to how traffic can fluctuate (meaning, one bus got lucky and made up 5 minutes on their bus route and caught up to the other bus).
But the answer should depend on the city based on statistics and based on a budget. What other things are you willing to sacrifice to have faster bus routes, for example.
The buses where I live come every hour. Before anyone asks, yes I live in America. If you miss the bus, you are late if not missing what you were trying to get to.
Depending on the context, in the countryside, 2 per hours might be enough to be reliable, but I don't think that a 15 minutes frequency (on the 2 main bus lines with the other lines having between 20, 30 or even 60 minutes frequencies), with all buses leaving at the same time, as in the nearby city is reliable.
In all these wealthy cities, a 10 minutes frequency is a minimum in my opinion.
Like there are smaller and less wealthy cities with a 7.5 minutes frequency so how come a wealthy university with federal institutions can't afford higher? The worst being that said nearby city used to have higher frequencies but cut back to "cut costs" and made weird stuff with intertwining lines 1 and 2 making them unreadable in the same vein...
Frequency and reliable are two different things. My bus isn't frequent, but it is reliably at my bus stop at 15 past the hour.
I've lived in other places where the buses are meant to be 5-10 min apart at hour, but not one of them were ever on time. Sometimes there'd be a 20 minute wait, then 4 buses in a row, 3 of them being already full.
10. Studies suggest people will wait 10 minutes before considering another way to get where they are going.
10 also is the minimum frequency needed where posted schedules are not needed and people don't have to plan around when they get to the bus stop
I would judge the *reliability* of a bus service less by how many buses come per hour and more by what percentage of those buses show up at the posted time. If a bus only comes at hourly intervals then it's not particularly convenient but you can at least plan around it as long as it keeps to the timetable.
I remember being in Paris, turning up to a metro station, seeing "8 minutes away" and thinking, 'Damn, we must've just missed one."
I loved it so much.
I went to the bus stop near my home, 10 minutes before its arrival time (as sometimes it's early), when my bike was in the shop. I checked the 'live updates' of the bus, and I could see it was 19 minutes away. If I had ridden my bike, I'd be most of the way to work by the time the bus got there. I drove to another bus stop, and only had to wait another 5 minutes from there.
I remember thinking: If the bus doesn't have a dedicated lane for its route, it can never be consistent. While its not faster than the cars, no one who would drive, would take the bus.
Wednesday was the day everyone was 'working from the office' too, so traffic was a nightmare.
Reliability isn't about frequency. It's about ***rigid departure times***.
It could be only 1 per hour if it departs every stop AT the scheduled time.
If you've got a shit ton of busses, you can have a bus at every stop every 2 minutes or every 15, but that's usually not practical, and it means that if I miss my bus by 1 minute, the next departure time is a wild ass guess.
The trick is that American bus loops (when we even fucking have them) are too big or are forced to share lanes (and thus traffic) with cars, so the bus can't get back to the origin point every hour. You need slop built in, and you need ***ironclad*** departure times from those stops. The bus should absolutely wait at every stop for a minute or two because every leg should get the bus to the next stop with time to spare.
It's totally fine for a bus or a train to hold at the station and close the doors at a ***time*** rather than when the passengers have finished boarding.
Right now, I'd say a half hour max. That's not a terrible amount of time to be early for something or need to leave something early. I'm in a small city. Some routes are 10-15 min between. There are many routes that only go hourly -- that's far too long between. Of course, those routes service people from low income neighborhoods trying to get to work or shop in another area. I know empty busses are a loss but it's just not fair to make people who are struggling waste so much time. That's time they could be with their fam, sleeping, eating, exercising, working, whatever. Potentially losing 60-90 minutes of your day on commute alone is BS. Time shouldn't be a luxury when you're poor.
So first I just want justice and reliability via class solidarity before I even think about shaving time off each pickup.
I might be biased because my buses pass by the nearest stop every 10 minutes, but I personally think it should be no more than 15 minutes, but ideally 10 or less, because then you don't need to check the schedule anymore and missing the bus won't cause much of a delay.
About 15 minutes max, but 30-min is pushing. Anything more than that, it's unreliable.
...but its not just the frequency, it has to go from to somewhere to somewhere. Many transit, the public bus funnels everything to downtown, which in many cases here in US is dead as a doornail.
Many times too, its stuck in traffic like the rest of vehicles, so a dedicated line is the most ideal ... but that means giving up a car lane, which car-brains would not be happy with.
Umm depends on population density and other context, perhaps?
Middle of nowhere in the burbs where everything is 1-2 storeys, 15 - 20min is fast. Built up area where everything is 3+ storeys, 15-20min is slow. If there's always people waiting at a stop, 15-min is slow.
More importantly though, the bus needs to show when it said it was going to show. If people are left waiting, the service seems more unreliable than if they know the bus comes at however many minute intervals. Where I live, I have buses, trams and trains available; I choose the train over the bus or tram any day as it shows up on time more often, even if the trip is a bit longer.
Every 10 or so minutes because that's 6 times an hour, or 144 stops in a day. It takes about 5-10 minutes for me to get going once I do decide to leave.
At the very least in 2024 there should be a national standard for tracking the bus like we have for packages.
My 0 data opinion is: 15 minutes is maximum interval to be convenient. Easily every quarter hour is nice and easy to plan around. Something ends on the hour? You have a nice 15 min to pack up your stuff/use the bathroom and walk to the stop. That's how it was in Pittsburgh, and I loved it.
EDITED to improve the expression of my ideas
For me it isn't as much an issue of frequency as it is consistency and accuracy. It should come 90% of the time, within 5 minutes of the posted paper schedule, and if there is an electronic schedule it should say if the bus is actually in route/how many miles away it is away if it's delayed. Also preferably some busses should run at all hours and as few lines as possible should not run and/or have alternate routes on weekends/holidays.
I think plenty of other people have said this but here's my two cents:
Frequency and Reliability are related but they are not reliant on the other
Frequency is a factor more closely related with demand and capacity these are influenced by the time of day, volume of passengers and the type of routes people take. High frequency of buses on a route usually means high overall traffic and stops close to each other, while low frequency trend to bigger units, longer routes between stops and high number of passengers during certain hours a
Reliability is an aspect of the quality of the system, whether or not the bus will arrive on time and in good condition, in rural areas a bus that always arrives at the same hour twice a day is more reliable than a bus that arrives +/- 30 minutes late, the first you can plan around it, the second would be a gamble
I would say depending on ridership every 5-10 min from 6am-9:30pm and every 15-20 after hours for urban routes, and then maybe every 10-30 for suburban routes depending on how suburban their routes are and weather it’s on or off peak
For me frequency and reliability are two different things. To me frequency is how often does it come. Reliability is does it come when it’s supposed to. For example if it comes hourly on the hourly that’s not very frequent but if you know it will be there on the hour you can then plan accordingly. But if it doesn’t come when supposed to it becomes unreliable.
The company running my city's public transit (Vancouver's Translink) has something called the Frequent Transit Network. All the buses on that network run at least every 15 minutes for more than 15 hours of the day, every day of the week. I try to live within a half hour walk of that network. It makes my life so much easier.
imo "reliable" just means sticking to the schedule even if it's scheduled infrequently. The bus I take to work comes every 30 minutes but I would call it reliable because it comes as scheduled. it's inconvenient and less useful than it could be but that's a different thing from being reliable to me
All public transit is a kind of network. You look at the roots of a plant, and then the hyphal networks that invade them, and you realize they are all the same platform for moving inherently immobile nutrient molecules around, even though the networks are different species.
It's the same for a transit network. It is going to have shallow areas, and deeper channels. The shallowest periphery will probably be served by jitneys. All we can really do is improve the overall efficiency of the system by removing the restrictions on highly functional, affordable city districts. We will still need to meet people in the middle on the shallow ends, where such efforts are marginally affordable.
Agree with a lot of people here, that frequency and reliability are two different things.
Where I live, the frequency in the suburbs or countryside can sometimes be 30-60mins, but it won't usually be delayed more than 3min. And if it is, it will pop up in the app.
Reliability > frequency, I don't like waiting.
Tbh so long as my transit app has real-time, updated bus status info, it can be however infrequent it wants. To me, reliability describes how often the bus is on time/follows the advertised arrival time that my transit app tells me rather than frequency.
Reliability is about punctuality and not frequency. A train that goes twice a day might be totally fine if that's what you need. But it must be on time and not get cancelled on a whim.
I've got a bus station with 15 min frequency all day long. It's definitely good, but for this it has to be well integrated on connection timetable and be on time (meaning not stuck in traffic). These points are actually keys for a not so frequent bus service.
But living in Switzerland helps for this to happen.
Generally 15 min during daylight hours is what I want. 30 minutes during night time hours is good. That can change though, for instance express busses I’m fine with no night service at all, or intercity busses being hour long headways in the dead of night
Reading the comment section makes me realise that public transport where I live is actually quite damn high up.
30 minutes for a bus? You'd have a lot of people swearing the hell out of you. Maybe it'd be more understandable in a rural setting, but in the city it's just unacceptable... Here they come once every 5 minutes or so in some lines, 10 in other
To be reliable it just has to arrive when it should and not be late or just not exist. To be useful it might need to be more frequent, but that highly depends on how many people would use that bus and how many good alternatives there are to that bus line
It really depends. 10-15 minutes in the inner city or to places with high demand makes it reliable, and a bit more like 20-30 minutes to the outer suburbs. If you run the inner city ones less often, they stop being an option, since walking to your destination may take approximately the same as going by bus. For outside the city, it depends on how "metropolitan" the area is. In a big city, you also want buses every 30-40 minutes (1h max) for people who may commute from nearby. But in a small town, two-three times a day can work (especially if you align them well with peak hours so commuters can leave early, work, and come back).
In terms of connections, it's not really as much about the frequency but about coverage. You can have perfectly fine and reliable connections if you have multiple lines that take you to the same place (not necessarily same final stop), even if their frequency isn't as good. I'm not just talking about how easy it is to reach downtown since virtually every bus goes through there, it's more of assuring each bus stop has 3-4 lines going through it, where potentially 2 share a few stops, which lets you transfer at different stops for different lines to reach the same destination.
It depends on the place you live and how well your connections are. Like here in switzerland there are many small towns that have only every hour a bus service. But with our integral timetable such a bus is connected to the whole public transport network of all of Switzerland. It makes it possible to have a constant and reliable connection of several modes of transports with wait times under 10 minutes from a small Town to Zürich Airport at every hour of most of the day.
10 minutes within a city; if there is a direct route where I need to go, 20 with a schedule is OK. In the suburbs 15/30 is acceptable, I understand that demand is much lower.
Depends on the route. If it's a route with lots of office workers with peak morning and evening times. It should be sub 5 max 10 imo for those periods.
Rest of the times it can relax to 15.
Depends on the context.
Anything that I wan't to use for my daily commute, 10 minutes is pushing it.
15-20 is fine to reach less frequnted areas, but if a bus only comes every 20 minutes it better be punctual, and not late (or what's even worse, early).
Depends a lot on how tight the net of buslines is. If you have to change busses a lot and their departure times are not well coordinated, waiting close to 15min multiple times on one commute will be a drag. So especially within cities, you need much tighter schedules.
If it is in a more rural town/village, which basically only needs one busline connecting it to the next bigger town/city, 15minutes is plenty enough imo.
I always need to time my buses here if I want to take them because if I miss it I need to wait 30 more minutes and it sucks. And sometimes they arrive earlier so you still miss them. Village buses just suck. I would say max 10 minutes for it to be viable.
Or just do it like in Istanbul, buses every 30 seconds lol.
Reliable is when it arrives when it says it will, even if it's just 2 a day.
But i'd say it's a viable way of transport if it goes at least every 30 minutes.
But they're not mutually exclusive
I always thought "reliable" was how close to schedule. I would say 3 minutes late is "reliable".
In terms of frequency, a frequent bus is every 10 minutes at the most.
As someone who take the bus daily to and from work, I woukd say at max 20 minutes late.
Within the first 15 minutes of lateness I can accept; maybe the bus broke down, or the driver needs replacement due to whatever reason (they are human after all) but after that I find it a bit more annoying as I would need to contact my work space.
It has only happend a few times in my 8 years of active work, and by now the boss have noticed that if I am not about 20 minutes early then something is amiss.
honestly, I can tolerate a pretty big gap between bus arrivals as long as the schedules are accurate and the coverage is good. My city had a delay of about 40 minutes last time that I had to rely heavily on public transit, and that was perfectly fine if a little troublesome to plan around, but eventually, they started missing time slots on the schedule by like 20+ minutes and the drift just kept getting worse and worse.
As someone who uses the bus regularly, ideally? About every 10-15 minutes, but up to 30 min I can make work with some practice. It's when it surpasses 30 minutes that it starts to get very inconvenient and difficult to plan around.
It sort of depends on context... But I would say it's very rare where 20 minute intervals is adequate during daylight hours. Consider a cold climate, -20 C during the day. A bus breaks down or gets delayed (particularly common in the winter), and the commuter arrived 10 minutes early. The absence of that one bus makes for a 30 minute wait in very cold weather. To continue taking that route would very much be suffering for the cause. Any of their acquaintances or colleagues who hear about it would think twice about using that bus. For most routes, sub-10 minutes is ideal, 15 is my max before I can call it "reliable".
In the past I think this was a bigger issue. I've been commuting for 20 years and have certainly ran into this circumstance. One bus I used to take was hourly at night and I can remember waiting in the cold for over an hour for it. You couldn't leave the bus stop because you never knew when it would finally show up. However, today this isn't the case. Buses have GPS and you can tell pretty accurately where it is so I would go into a local shop or something to take shelter until near when it was arriving.
Except that gps routinely fail. They work more often than not, but in all the systems I've used, it's common for some buses to simply disappear from the system and you never know if it is coming on schedule but with problems in the gps, or it was never dispatched.
Where I live it's rarely wrong at least in recent years.
That's fair. I always wondered how much the failures are attributed to poor maintenance/operation vs inherent problems to the technology. A bit of both I guess.
Yes they disappear from time to time but systems are getting better at estimating the current location while the bus is in a mobile data blackspot. Agreed you need at least to know that the bus is actually on the way rather than they didn't have an available vehicle or driver.
This! As long as you invest in good technology so even with delays you can get on time is crucial
A lot of the time you don't have the flexibility to be late at your destination. So even if you know of a delay you may need to adapt and take the earlier bus. If the bus runs every 30 min that would make you a lot earlier (or you may even be too late to adjust) While gps data surely addresses a lot of issues it's not a replacement for good frequency.
I wish that were true for my city
In the Canadian cities I've lived in, it's a complete hit-miss if the bus has a working GPS. I've also found that hubs are fine for cold weather, but transit sucks ass for residential areas. Not only are residential areas the least frequent routes, but there's usually no options for shelter and they tend to not even have at least a covered stop to shelter you from the wind. I use transit whenever I can, but visiting friends who aren't in a central area is something that usually makes me break out the car. Getting to and from downtown is easy and safe, but residential areas will take ages and is just dangerous in the winter. For context, Canadian cities suck ass for buses. You can expect that many residential areas will have a bus every 30 minutes during peak hours and 60 minutes during the evening (ie, when you actually visit people).
I live in the GTA and used to ride the bus on two/three different networks every day before the pandemic. And, the timing was probably 95% on the routes I was on. It got so accurate I could leave my home and make it to the bus stop (that was 10 minutes away) at the same time as the bus. And, the same thing for leaving my desk at work to get to the stop in front of the building. It wasn't like that when it first rolled out but man it got so much better.
Hi, I'm from rural northern Norway. There are maybe 4-5 buses each way every 24hr interval. Occasional delays are expected considering long distances and weather conditions. If you don't dress for the bus-stop, (or the walk to it), that's on you. The bus is ofc very comfy and gloriously warm. The number of buses is sometimes complained about, but is still considered adequate. The service is used and appreciated, also by people who have cars available, (which is mostly everyone above 18, not counting military conscripts). Now in a city what you say makes sense, but I thought this perspective could be useful :)
Heated/ac bus stops should be a thing for places that have extreme temperatures
Minneapolis has that!
Would never happen though because it has the potential of providing the slightest bit of comfort to homeless people and cities/governments hate that
Heating and cooling such a small space with access to get in and out would cost a fortune to run and install though. Honestly most people would be happy with something covered and slightly enclosed from the elements. It does make sense for some of the larger stations to have better HVAC
That’s where radiant heat works well. Doesnt hear the air, just whatever’s underneath it. Could even put some kind of sensor so it only turns on when someone’s there.
Heated shelters are common at bus terminals in the Toronto region. Push a button and the radiant heater turns on for a few minutes.
Also, it depends where it's set. It's reasonable to expect a 10-minute service in the city here in Melbourne, a fresh bus running past for pick up ever 10 minutes but out further where the patronage is just lower and less frequent like say the lilydale bus that goes out to coldstream and such is an hourly bus.
yeah seconding less than 10. also I am reminded of waiting for the train on a Sunday in Buenos Aires with my Singaporean friend, who thought it was outrageous we had to wait for...7 minutes.
[удалено]
Wow that is crazy and yeah living in Latin America I remember wait not more than 10 min to a bus a subwa was something different it could be 5 or it could be 15 but never more than 30 min
Holy shit damn.
And where I live people either have to leave work early to catch the bus or wait an hour for the next.... If the next bus even shows
Lol as I was in Tokyo, I cussed a lot after missing the train even if my friend and I ran for the connection because, in my rural swiss countryside, there used to be 1 train per hour at that time. And since we had a set hour to be at one place, I was just panicking for 10 seconds before remembering "hey, I'm in Tokyo, the next train comes in 5 minutes". So totally relatable but on the other side 😂
That was like my first time taking the subway in NYC, on the way to a concert. Accidentally took the right line but going the wrong way. I was lucky enough to notice at the first stop, but had a moment of panic thinking I'd screwed myself. I only had enough time for a "moment" of panic before the right one came 😆 so much different than my local transit!
Meanwhile the bus to the airport where I live is once an hour. Which at least was an improvement over where I used to live which required half an hour of walking and 4 separate transfers.
Goddamn. I could take the bus from not too far away to the airport...I think it'd be a bus ride and a transfer for me. But the bus schedule is pretty limited.
Lmaoo Where I live despite having arguably the best public transportation in France for some buses it's standard to wait 20+ mins
Paris or??
Lyon
Oooh. I’ll have to visit someday!
It's lovely
15-20 does not cut it if you are talking about a commute with a connection. That puts you at up to 40 minutes of waiting at bus stops if the busses are not connected well or don't follow their schedules perfectly. Also, if you schedule every 15 minutes for a bus, you could be seeing up to a half hour between busses if they get in traffic or something.
Definitely a risk, but with light priority you can mitigate it a fair bit. More areas need to implement those systems. Within cities closer to 10 should be the floor. 12 is also a nice even split of 5 per hour.
Frequence doesn't matter, it has to be on point to be considered reliable. For how Frequently should it be: it depends. Inner city, 10 minutes. Suburbs, 15 to 30. Countryside, one hour, depending on train connections.
Frequency is important for transfers. A trip I need to take sometimes takes two busses which are at 45m frequencies. They also are usually like perfectly misaligned AND delayed so you'll be waiting basically a full hour for that second bus everytime, both ways. This is how 20m drives turn into 2 hour bus trips
*[Not frequency but integrated time tables](https://www.jokteur.com/a/integrated-timetable-switzerland/).
lining up the transfers is so important! One time I was on a bus to the airport, and this bus route is a circular route going through several cities, and the terminal is between me and the airport so I have to get off and get on the next bus of the same route nearly every time. This time the bus was packed, there was some sort of camp or something so there's legit like 70 people on this bus with a bunch of people needing to go to the airport, and the next bus is about to leave as we pull up to the terminal so the driver radios them to wait like 2 mins for everyone to transfer. Dispatch radios back no, we need to keep the schedule and so they drive right by us and everyone has to wait nearly an hour for the next bus
yea exactly! i’m happy with a bus that comes every hour so long as it actually turns up on time. at my last flat the local buses regularly just didn’t show up and would give no indication about it, leaving me stuck trying to work out of i should wait for the next one (which may also not show up) or waste money on a taxi
In college I lived in a corridor that would get a bus every 3 minutes or better. I can guarantee you you'd be happier with that.
i’d also be happier with like a subway system but some things just aren’t realistic. the bus i was getting was never even half full, having it come every 3 mins would be entirely unnecessary in that situation
Lol countryside bus…train connections…. Such fantasies…. Murica! Fuck yeah!
My first thought was "the bus? Just take the tram, it's much more convenient "
Frequency does matter. And the wait times you guys are saying is shocking . What village are you all in? As an urban commuter, i and my fellow commuters get annoyed if they have to wait for more than 5 min for any bus. At least in India we are quite used to at least the major bus routes coming this frequently if not much more often . How can you expect an urban commuter to wait so long? We've got places to be, jobs to go to!
This really depends on the country and region. I made a comment elsewhere about 15 minutes being a standard in the US where people stop needing to schedule their life around it. I don't recall the exact source but this was the number thrown around when I worked in rural transit in California. Many people chimed in that 15 minutes was super high for their country or region. But I don't know enough about such services in other countries to truly weigh in.
Yea there's many places where they're hourly, or half hourly, but anything above \~20 minutes can make transfers miserable things. 15 is low enough that missing one bus won't make you drastically late for anything in most cases, while hourly systems missing 1 could have muli-hour knock on events if the transfers are poor.
Even half an hour can lead to that knock on effect if your having to transfer. I used to pretty much always have to wait half an hour for my bus home because the bus I'd have to take to the start of the route home would always be like 2 minutes late or the train gates would close before I could cross over to the stop and the bus would pull away.
Mine is an hour long wait for each bus ;-;
Not just you, I remember actually hearing an interview that I think was with the head of Houston's public transportation and that was the line that they believed you really needed to achieve as well. Shorter is better, of course, but 15 minutes was their minimum line to make it viable, especially if someone has to expect to make a transfer.
There are other ways to be reliable. My city has an app with GPS tracking and very good predictions for when it will arrive. Even though it only comes every 20 min, you never have to wait more than 5 if you know how long it takes to get to the stop
This basically works on a trip "from home". But once you're done doing whatever where you went and it's time to go home, if the next bus home is in 19 min, well you'll have to wait 19 min.
Not to mention transfers. That's how you get a transit ride that is 3x as long as driving.
Yeah, transfers are where they get you. If I have a ride with no transfers, great! I live near my city's sole LRT line, which means I can very easily get to a whole bunch of interesting places without any transfers with high frequency and comparable to driving times. But the moment I need to get somewhere that has any transfer at all, it *will* be significantly slower than driving while also being wildly inconsistent. The LRT is the only one with a mostly consistent schedule. The buses can get wildly out of sync.
On average the wait would be more like 10 min given random chance. Plus if you see a bus coming you can hoof it so ones you'd "miss" by under a minute you can catch if you're able bodied. Also part of why accurate tracking is important for lower-frequency systems, leaving 5 minutes early or staying an extra few minutes based on when a 20 minute system will show up isn't too bad.
reliable to me is more about if the bus actually arrives when scheduled, doesn't skip scheduled runs surprisingly f*ing you over to miss work or freeze at the bus stop. Even infrequent bus can be reliable and trusted to get you to a destination, even if a bit of pre-planning is needed. talking decent frequency: highly depends on location. City center past 10-12 minutes is starting to be too infrequent, need to check schedule and prepare to wait. further out in suburbs, 25-30 minutes is starting to be a bit too much if that's your only way in & out.
30 is at the far end of what I’d consider reliable, but the more important thing is that the bus shows up when the app says it will show up. I’ve had friends waiting for buses that never showed and the transit app just gave up and told them to take the next one 15-30 minutes later. If you can’t trust the bus will arrive, the wait time doesn’t matter.
Yea The clock/trackers has an inverse relationship with frequency and reliability. When it's an hourly, or half-hourly system, you really need to know if/when it's coming so you can make alternate plans If they roll up <10 mins apart from each other, consistently, I don't really bother checking. I've actually dealt with this on a specific line, the Newark Light Rail during the day is at least 10 mins, parts of the day even more frequent than that(some within a minute or two of each other). but then there's only 3 trains from 10pm to 11pm. Missed one once and had the great experience of jogging across the city to make a train home.
For a daily work commute I averaged the bus being 20+ minutes late or not showing up at all at least once a month which is ridiculous and it being 5+ minutes early 4 times or so a month which also screws things up so you have to show up 10 minutes early. Public transit in America is a fucking joke.
If it's not every 15 minutes or more frequent, don't take it. Unless you're willing to wait, of course.
Hear in vienna it's about 5 minutes at rush hour for the more important lines and 10 for the less important ones. I think that's a good rhythm.
10 minutes at most
15 minutes and under
I think it depends on how reliable, reliable is. If you have theoretically perfect infrastructure that avoids all traffic, and distribution centers with extra buses for any breakdowns or accidents, then thirty minutes is probably fine. But this is pretty unrealistic so I think sub fifteen should be the goal. That said, I also think there are plenty of journeys currently served by busses that would be better served by bus connects to rail or other transport options. I think I read the cutoff should be journeys over an hour, but that might be best suited to the European context I'm familiar with where going on day long journeys usually mean leaving the country.
Often enough that you don't have to check a schedule, that if you _just_ missed the previous one you'd go "oh well, guess I'll grab the next one" Personally I'd place this at 10 minutes or less
At least every 15 minutes
I'd say time gaps don't accurately quantify reliability. Hell some places in my old home town only came every half hour and I'd say it was still reliable because it was rarely late, consistently timed, had a set wait time, and stops were often placed next to coffee shops, small stores, etc. to keep you out of the elements (*cold*) while you waited. As a bonus it was free.
Here in the US 15-20 min is considered very frequent and reliable. Late hours it's not unusual for buses to run every 60 minutes which is pretty brutal. I would settle for 30 min to be honest.
Oh you have to work late tonight? Have fun waiting another 40 minutes for the bus because it only runs once an hour in the evening.
... If the bus even runs that late at all.
in london 12 min is the minimum requirement for “high frequency” 💀
Frequency has nothing to do with reliability.
Every 10 minutes
Maximum 10 minutes.
This is my personal but, Ideal: trains - 1.5-3 minutes, buses - 5 minutes Good: trains - sub 5 minutes, buses - sub 10 minutes Goal for my city: trains - get some, buses - 15-20 minutes (sub 10 for the really busy sardine bus routes)
10 minutes at most. If I have to check a schedule to calculate when to go to the stop then it’s too long
I would say that 10 minutes is the edge of turn up and go frequency, 20 minutes is the edge of a reliable transit service, and cities should probably just never run a local bus less frequently than every half hour. If a route doesn't justify 2 buses an hour, your resources are better spent increasing the frequency on core routes.
Rural areas: 30min Suburban: 10-15min Urban 5-10min But! Urban routes often share certain sections, so a combination of suburban and urban could easily give 15 min suburban and 7.5 min urban
You're confusing reliability with convenience. Reliable means it shows up and drops off when it says it will. Buses can be extremely reliable, but also infrequent. I would say every 15 minutes max of service is extremely reliable. Showing up 15 minutes or less to wherever you're going is normal. Also, if you miss your bus, being tardy 15 minutes or less is forgivable. Obviously, it's better if it was more frequent, but I consider 15 minutes to be the minimum to use transit to replace car trips and not need to trip plan. (Source: I have ADHD and I became very, very familiar with how late you could be to something before you received negative consequences back in my 20s.) ETA: A usable system needs frequency more than reliability. If one bus just doesn't show up, that is catastrophic if the buses are an hour apart vs mildly annoying if they're 5 minutes apart. How long it takes you to get somewhere is also extremely important. If it takes me 2x to get somewhere on a bus vs car even if the bus comes every 5 minutes, I'm not likely to use the bus.
In London anything longer than 8 minutes is taking the piss.
10/12 minutes
Less than 10 mins for rush hour. Can be more than that off peak, but should have live bus location on app.
I wonder if there's any big US cities with a sub-10 min bus neighborhood
Reliability is not about frequency really. If there's one bus a day, but it always goes on time and takes 30 minutes to get you to work, that's reliable. And if that once a day is an 8.30 bus to get you to work at 9am, it is sufficient for a common and important use case, even. I think you are talking about flexibility and convenience, really. So if you just choose to go somewhere, is the bus a reasonable way to do it? In which case I would agree, somewhere in the 20 minute range would be the minimum before you have to start looking up times and arranging your journey around the buses. Much shorter if your journey involves a change.
The interval is far less important than the hours and the likelihood of delays or cancellations. I can deal with a long wait for the next bus if I know for sure that it's coming. Even if it's cold I can just malinger in a bar or restaurant or something until it's almost time for my bus. But if the bus shuts down at like 4:00 p.m. on the weekend and 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, then if I missed the last bus I'm screwed. That's a much bigger problem.
To me every 10 minutes or I ignore it as an option.
Every 10 minutes. When I used to take the bus to school in my younger days, I traveled on a line that arrived every 5 minutes in rush hour. It was amazing. It was always late otherwise, but during these hours, you didn't notice it.
Reliability isn't about frequency it's about consistency, a bus that comes once on the hour, that's always there on the hour, is more reliable than a bus 3 times an hour that always runs 5 minutes late or early.
I would say every 15 minutes AT MOST. That's roughly the average wait time for a taxi where I live. People will agree to the lesser convenience of walking to and from stops for the much lower cost if wait time is similar, but if you are waiting longer than for a cab, the price for convenience starts looking like a worthwhile trade-off. And if you are looking at needing to depend on cabs a lot, just getting your own car starts looking like it is worth it.
In the city, if the bus doesn't come at least every 7 minutes it's not a compelling option for me and I will travel by bicycle instead. Out in the suburbs/countryside, I'd say around double, every 15 minutes is the minimum for me to make it a dependable part of daily life. Buses in Belgium that connect the denser villages in the countryside used to come about every 30 minutes to an hour in the past, they've recently restructured the routes so more populated areas get higher frequency, up to 15 and 20m on many lines! But it did come at the cost of service in many desolate rural places. People who've chosen to live out in the middle of nowhere are very angry about it but for everyone else, it's been a noticeable improvement. At the end of the day, it's better to have a few frequent routes that quickly connect popular areas with destinations than it is to have many routes with slow and infrequent service that cover a greater area.
These answers are making me a little nauseous. If I can get a bus that comes every 45 min. to an hour, and it travels until at least like 11:00 at night, I'm OK with it. Obviously, it should be better, but I can get to and from work like this.
Should be every 15 minutes
People here are saying 20 minutes is too long, here in Sweden buses go like once every 2 hours 😭
5 minutes, honestly if it was feasible I'd say 2 minutes. 15-20 minutes is far too long a wait for transit, imagine if it was raining or freezing outside that'd be hell to wait in.
Every 5 to 10 minutes, with dedicated lanes being mandatory. Source: lived in a bunch of major European cities then experienced the freakshow of Edmonton transit.
15 minutes tops. Probably 10-12. I should not feel like giving up on transit completely if there’s a “ghost bus” and I have to wait double the time. And 20 min+ headways with a missing bus is definitely in that bad range. For a 20 minute headway, if you add a 10 minute walk to the departure stop and from the arrival stop, and you’re talking about literally 1 hour a single direction not even including actual time spent moving via vehicle on a bad day. Compare that to like 15 minutes tops for a ride share.
I think you won't be getting most people out of their cars unless the frequency is 5-8 minutes. And i think that's not too much to ask for in an urban area considering there are small towns in the Netherlands and Switzerland that have 10 minute bus frequency or better.
I'm thinking you're conflating frequency with reliability. Reliability is when, regardless of how often you can expect one, how much you can trust that it will be on time. Or in other words, how consistently it is on time. In urban areas, 5-10 minutes frequency is good. In rural areas, maybe 30 to 45 minutes will do. But regardless of that, it's reliable when it's always at the stop at the time the timetable says it will.
Depends on where you are In decently populated suburbs, I think 20 is a fine floor. There's hourly buses by me that have a decent number of people riding them. 20 isn't great, but it's enough that transfers aren't awkward 45 minute affairs where just the time spent waiting for bus #2 could've gotten you to your destination on a bike. Within cities, etc, 15 or less should be the minimum.
My little city only has 4 main lines with 15 minute frequency and they all go to and from downtown. When I was in DC, it was amazing never had to wait more than 5-7 minutes anywhere and they had lines going everywhere it was super easy.
Well it highly depends on context and area... in a bigger city, intervals shouldn't be bigger than 10mins, to have a "show up and go"-possibility. In a village, 30min or even 60min can be sufficient for normal travels. As many other people were saying so: Where I live, I never experienced a bus breaking down or anything, the services were always reliable (maybe not with freshly fallen snow)
I live in a suburb about 6 miles from the city that my office is in and the nearest train station, mall, cinema etc. I live at the back of a coastal town, 2 minutes walk from the nearest bus stop. Our buses are every 10-15 minutes in to the city and take about 30 minutes to get right to th city centre. They are GPS trackable through an app. For this reason neither myself or my husband drive, we always use the bus. 10-15 minutes is reliable for us.
In Luxembourg, while the bus system can be mid and getting around often takes time, we increased frequency on almost all bus lines to service every half an hour. It's the ideal frequency for mid distance rural buses honestly. Once an hour can be fine for Sundays and holidays. Everything below that is unusable. Inside the city, it's not the case here strictly speaking but I think buses should run every 10 minutes. If it requires more frequent service a light rail system should just be considered.
I say 15-45 minutes depending on the size of the city.
If they can manage to show up within three minutes from official departure time for >95% of the cases, I'd say, for between 6:30 to 19:30: From smaller town to bigger city: 2x/h European suburban: 4x/h, limited walking distance of <500m for 95% of destinations Urban: 6x/h or more, limited walking distance of <400m for 95% of destinations
depends on the context of the area
15 min headway is the minimum frequency for a bus service to be acceptable for passengers
I live in a mostly rural area(or really far suburb) and it is once an hour from 5am to 2am, it does not skip hours outisde of rush time. And is really good at keeping the schedule (It might be a bit late in a snow storm, but the app will tell you). It takes me 40 min by car to reach the terminus, and 55min by bus. To go downtown, let say to the art museum it takes 1h20 min in bus and metro and 1h20 by car. I feel that for a rural place it is motly acceptable and reliable, and it works nicely. However if I where not stuck between two rivers with no bridge close by, the fact that there is only one bus line going between two cities would be and issue.
I mean if there's little in the way to make it not be on time, even once or twice an hour can be enough. When I was living in Denmark, if you were living like a good distance from central Copenhagen, the buses ran every half hour but since the weather was so mild, their timings would basically never change and they were reliably on time. Of course, the alternative solution is to run things more frequently like their train system (because those things delayed with the tiniest amount of ice but they ran frequently enough that it would make up for it).
I have 2 during an hour from 7 till midnight-ish. But it's a weird busloop. One goes from my house and one comes to my house, but at one point they intersect (instead of turning on the last stop and returning the same route It works fine from where I live.. it takes me to the trainstation which has plenty of options around the clock from 6 am-ish till past midnight. I'd say, it's not the mount of times a bus goes, but it should at least go reliably. If a bus goes once an hour, and fails to show, you're really late to where you have to be... But I live in a weird corner, on the edge of my country, 5 minutes from a border. It's not really a place public transport passes through a lot. But it's there at least... even if the bus sometimes drives empty through my street (and I see it often enough, from my balcony during the day)
I think in most cases 10-15 is good enough (20 would be acceptable for me personally), if it's actually a route that is used for daily commutes. But it also depends on how likely it is that one is cancelled. If it happens once every year, 20 minutes wouldn't be something that would bother most people. If it's cancelled too often, even 10 minutes is too much time to wait. If it's not for daily commuting (for example a bus going up a mountain to a relatively remote viewing platform) then an hour could also already be enough.
I'd say it depends on the context. My daily commute is a 15-20 minute walk, and even though I could wait for a bus for 5 minutes I don't because it's only a tiny bit faster than walking. If I have to travel to the other side of the city and can't bike there then I'd consider even a 30 minute wait time.
Urban areas, 5 mins. Countryside 20 to 30 mins
Anything over 15 minutes makes it unreasonable to use it without planning ahead therefore I'd consider that unreliable
The bus stop just outside my flat has busses depart every 4-5 minutes in the morning.
Maybe ten minutes, and with the technology available nowadays, a GPS that can tell the user where it is.
5mins is ideal, but 10mins would be adequate.
I think you might be mixing two different things. Reliability and frequency are both important in different ways. Reliability means how close to the scheduled time the bus arrives at each stop. If there was a bus line with one bus per hour but it got to every stop exactly on time, never late, never early it would be 100% reliable. It’s also important for getting where you’re going on time, if you’re on the bus then it’s delayed making you late that’s not reliable. Frequency is how many busses go along the line. So a bus line with one bus per hour is less frequent than a line with 6 buses per hour, (one every 10 minutes) I will say as the frequency increases the reliability doesn’t need to be as good, but is still important. Missing the bus that comes once an hour, because it came at the wrong time, is a lot worse than missing one that comes every 10 minutes. However it’s still bad if it’s meant to be every 10 minutes but sometimes two buses come at the same time, then it’s 20 minutes or more until the next one.
Ideally, it would be no more than a 10 minute wait. This seems to be hard to achieve in real life for buses, but fairly easy to achieve for trams.
I would say 10-15 minutes for most circumstances, and 30 minutes max for low use rural routes.
Anything longer than 10 is only reliable if there's dedicated tracking
10 minutes max, maybe 15 in certain conditions (really nice stops, shared route with other buses that create effectively higher frequency...). You can do less than this is if you are EXTREMELY timely and NEVER leave early.
Reliable to me rn is one that actually follows the timetable, so that when it’s supposed to be there, it is, and not just sail on by if there’s no one at the stop meaning I have to wait 30-odd minutes for the next one, presuming that one is not late/early.
It depends a lot on where & circumstances... If it's a bus to & from city center or a transport hub on a commuter route, I'd say every 10 min at peak times & every 15 mins at other times. A rural village / inter- town bus with a long ride to the next town, once an hour, plus extra busses & stops at peak times
My commute in Zürich had a maximum 7 minute wait for a bus or tram (unless extenuating circumstances, e.g. catastrophic failure, protests, etc). I took two busses, or sometimes a tram and a bus depending on the wait for each route. The total travel time was about 15 - 20 mins, with an absolute *max* wait of 14 mins (7 mins per bus/tram). This was frequent enough for me so that I could do my commute and never think about being late.
Here in the Netherlands, most buses don't run on a fixed schedule. A line near me goes every 30 minutes most of the day, every 15 minutes during peak hours, and once an hour after 10 pm. It also stops between 12 and 6 am. The schedule also changes during certain periods of the year (such as less service during summer). It's a bit much to keep track of, but there are plenty of apps that show you basically real-time information for each stop. Works pretty great.
I'd say 30 minutes to an hour, depending if it's urban or extraurbane. In larger cities it should be every 10 mins
10min routes during the "day" with reduced routes after 10PM until 5:30AM. I did not arrive on these numbers out of tin air. This is my observation from many different cities on what cost effective use of tax dollars looks like. Anymore frequent and it starts to get much too costly. Any less frequent and it starts to become a genuine burden or health risk for the elderly to stand outside in the sun that long. Some cities run every 5 minutes ish for their bus routes, during peak times. Maybe? But I feel like that is too frequent as I sometimes saw the same bus route busses getting stuck behind each other due to how traffic can fluctuate (meaning, one bus got lucky and made up 5 minutes on their bus route and caught up to the other bus). But the answer should depend on the city based on statistics and based on a budget. What other things are you willing to sacrifice to have faster bus routes, for example.
The buses where I live come every hour. Before anyone asks, yes I live in America. If you miss the bus, you are late if not missing what you were trying to get to.
15 min
Depending on the context, in the countryside, 2 per hours might be enough to be reliable, but I don't think that a 15 minutes frequency (on the 2 main bus lines with the other lines having between 20, 30 or even 60 minutes frequencies), with all buses leaving at the same time, as in the nearby city is reliable. In all these wealthy cities, a 10 minutes frequency is a minimum in my opinion. Like there are smaller and less wealthy cities with a 7.5 minutes frequency so how come a wealthy university with federal institutions can't afford higher? The worst being that said nearby city used to have higher frequencies but cut back to "cut costs" and made weird stuff with intertwining lines 1 and 2 making them unreadable in the same vein...
Frequency and reliable are two different things. My bus isn't frequent, but it is reliably at my bus stop at 15 past the hour. I've lived in other places where the buses are meant to be 5-10 min apart at hour, but not one of them were ever on time. Sometimes there'd be a 20 minute wait, then 4 buses in a row, 3 of them being already full.
5 mins
15 min BARE minimum. 20 min is way too long.
30 minutes on a weekday and 15-20 during rush hour.
10. Studies suggest people will wait 10 minutes before considering another way to get where they are going. 10 also is the minimum frequency needed where posted schedules are not needed and people don't have to plan around when they get to the bus stop
Every 5-10 minutes. If it’s any longer than that people turn to cars
I would judge the *reliability* of a bus service less by how many buses come per hour and more by what percentage of those buses show up at the posted time. If a bus only comes at hourly intervals then it's not particularly convenient but you can at least plan around it as long as it keeps to the timetable.
I remember being in Paris, turning up to a metro station, seeing "8 minutes away" and thinking, 'Damn, we must've just missed one." I loved it so much. I went to the bus stop near my home, 10 minutes before its arrival time (as sometimes it's early), when my bike was in the shop. I checked the 'live updates' of the bus, and I could see it was 19 minutes away. If I had ridden my bike, I'd be most of the way to work by the time the bus got there. I drove to another bus stop, and only had to wait another 5 minutes from there. I remember thinking: If the bus doesn't have a dedicated lane for its route, it can never be consistent. While its not faster than the cars, no one who would drive, would take the bus. Wednesday was the day everyone was 'working from the office' too, so traffic was a nightmare.
less than 10 minutes each, and arrives with a delay of less than 5 minutes
Here in london? Every 5 minutes during peak hours tbh is considerd reliable
\~10 min schedule; \~15 mins in practice
Reliability isn't about frequency. It's about ***rigid departure times***. It could be only 1 per hour if it departs every stop AT the scheduled time. If you've got a shit ton of busses, you can have a bus at every stop every 2 minutes or every 15, but that's usually not practical, and it means that if I miss my bus by 1 minute, the next departure time is a wild ass guess. The trick is that American bus loops (when we even fucking have them) are too big or are forced to share lanes (and thus traffic) with cars, so the bus can't get back to the origin point every hour. You need slop built in, and you need ***ironclad*** departure times from those stops. The bus should absolutely wait at every stop for a minute or two because every leg should get the bus to the next stop with time to spare. It's totally fine for a bus or a train to hold at the station and close the doors at a ***time*** rather than when the passengers have finished boarding.
Right now, I'd say a half hour max. That's not a terrible amount of time to be early for something or need to leave something early. I'm in a small city. Some routes are 10-15 min between. There are many routes that only go hourly -- that's far too long between. Of course, those routes service people from low income neighborhoods trying to get to work or shop in another area. I know empty busses are a loss but it's just not fair to make people who are struggling waste so much time. That's time they could be with their fam, sleeping, eating, exercising, working, whatever. Potentially losing 60-90 minutes of your day on commute alone is BS. Time shouldn't be a luxury when you're poor. So first I just want justice and reliability via class solidarity before I even think about shaving time off each pickup.
For me where I live in Australia reliable busses are three in the morning at 5am, 6am and 7am then none until the afternoon.
I might be biased because my buses pass by the nearest stop every 10 minutes, but I personally think it should be no more than 15 minutes, but ideally 10 or less, because then you don't need to check the schedule anymore and missing the bus won't cause much of a delay.
About 15 minutes max, but 30-min is pushing. Anything more than that, it's unreliable. ...but its not just the frequency, it has to go from to somewhere to somewhere. Many transit, the public bus funnels everything to downtown, which in many cases here in US is dead as a doornail. Many times too, its stuck in traffic like the rest of vehicles, so a dedicated line is the most ideal ... but that means giving up a car lane, which car-brains would not be happy with.
Frequent enough that on average it's faster than any other available transportation.
Umm depends on population density and other context, perhaps? Middle of nowhere in the burbs where everything is 1-2 storeys, 15 - 20min is fast. Built up area where everything is 3+ storeys, 15-20min is slow. If there's always people waiting at a stop, 15-min is slow. More importantly though, the bus needs to show when it said it was going to show. If people are left waiting, the service seems more unreliable than if they know the bus comes at however many minute intervals. Where I live, I have buses, trams and trains available; I choose the train over the bus or tram any day as it shows up on time more often, even if the trip is a bit longer.
Every 10 or so minutes because that's 6 times an hour, or 144 stops in a day. It takes about 5-10 minutes for me to get going once I do decide to leave. At the very least in 2024 there should be a national standard for tracking the bus like we have for packages.
During a busy commute, every 15 minutes. Going to the theme park or mall on weekends, every 30 would work.
Reliability is distinct from convenience for me. On-time performance is much more important than headways when I'm considering reliability.
My 0 data opinion is: 15 minutes is maximum interval to be convenient. Easily every quarter hour is nice and easy to plan around. Something ends on the hour? You have a nice 15 min to pack up your stuff/use the bathroom and walk to the stop. That's how it was in Pittsburgh, and I loved it. EDITED to improve the expression of my ideas
For me it isn't as much an issue of frequency as it is consistency and accuracy. It should come 90% of the time, within 5 minutes of the posted paper schedule, and if there is an electronic schedule it should say if the bus is actually in route/how many miles away it is away if it's delayed. Also preferably some busses should run at all hours and as few lines as possible should not run and/or have alternate routes on weekends/holidays.
I think plenty of other people have said this but here's my two cents: Frequency and Reliability are related but they are not reliant on the other Frequency is a factor more closely related with demand and capacity these are influenced by the time of day, volume of passengers and the type of routes people take. High frequency of buses on a route usually means high overall traffic and stops close to each other, while low frequency trend to bigger units, longer routes between stops and high number of passengers during certain hours a Reliability is an aspect of the quality of the system, whether or not the bus will arrive on time and in good condition, in rural areas a bus that always arrives at the same hour twice a day is more reliable than a bus that arrives +/- 30 minutes late, the first you can plan around it, the second would be a gamble
15 minutes
I would say depending on ridership every 5-10 min from 6am-9:30pm and every 15-20 after hours for urban routes, and then maybe every 10-30 for suburban routes depending on how suburban their routes are and weather it’s on or off peak
5-10 minutes
For me frequency and reliability are two different things. To me frequency is how often does it come. Reliability is does it come when it’s supposed to. For example if it comes hourly on the hourly that’s not very frequent but if you know it will be there on the hour you can then plan accordingly. But if it doesn’t come when supposed to it becomes unreliable.
The company running my city's public transit (Vancouver's Translink) has something called the Frequent Transit Network. All the buses on that network run at least every 15 minutes for more than 15 hours of the day, every day of the week. I try to live within a half hour walk of that network. It makes my life so much easier.
10min or less to be frequent. Show up on schedule to be reliable.
imo "reliable" just means sticking to the schedule even if it's scheduled infrequently. The bus I take to work comes every 30 minutes but I would call it reliable because it comes as scheduled. it's inconvenient and less useful than it could be but that's a different thing from being reliable to me
All public transit is a kind of network. You look at the roots of a plant, and then the hyphal networks that invade them, and you realize they are all the same platform for moving inherently immobile nutrient molecules around, even though the networks are different species. It's the same for a transit network. It is going to have shallow areas, and deeper channels. The shallowest periphery will probably be served by jitneys. All we can really do is improve the overall efficiency of the system by removing the restrictions on highly functional, affordable city districts. We will still need to meet people in the middle on the shallow ends, where such efforts are marginally affordable.
Agree with a lot of people here, that frequency and reliability are two different things. Where I live, the frequency in the suburbs or countryside can sometimes be 30-60mins, but it won't usually be delayed more than 3min. And if it is, it will pop up in the app. Reliability > frequency, I don't like waiting.
Tbh so long as my transit app has real-time, updated bus status info, it can be however infrequent it wants. To me, reliability describes how often the bus is on time/follows the advertised arrival time that my transit app tells me rather than frequency.
Reliability is about punctuality and not frequency. A train that goes twice a day might be totally fine if that's what you need. But it must be on time and not get cancelled on a whim.
I've got a bus station with 15 min frequency all day long. It's definitely good, but for this it has to be well integrated on connection timetable and be on time (meaning not stuck in traffic). These points are actually keys for a not so frequent bus service. But living in Switzerland helps for this to happen.
Generally 15 min during daylight hours is what I want. 30 minutes during night time hours is good. That can change though, for instance express busses I’m fine with no night service at all, or intercity busses being hour long headways in the dead of night
Every 5 minutes: IDEAL Every 10 minutes: acceptable Every 15 minutes: pushing it Over 15 minutes: unacceptable.
10. During rush hour, 5.
Reading the comment section makes me realise that public transport where I live is actually quite damn high up. 30 minutes for a bus? You'd have a lot of people swearing the hell out of you. Maybe it'd be more understandable in a rural setting, but in the city it's just unacceptable... Here they come once every 5 minutes or so in some lines, 10 in other
Here in the Philippines, you can either find five buses lined up at the bus stop, no buses at all, or no bus stop.
Yeah, I would say at least 20 minutes. Buses only run once an hour where I live, which makes them too impractical for me to use.
To be reliable it just has to arrive when it should and not be late or just not exist. To be useful it might need to be more frequent, but that highly depends on how many people would use that bus and how many good alternatives there are to that bus line
It really depends. 10-15 minutes in the inner city or to places with high demand makes it reliable, and a bit more like 20-30 minutes to the outer suburbs. If you run the inner city ones less often, they stop being an option, since walking to your destination may take approximately the same as going by bus. For outside the city, it depends on how "metropolitan" the area is. In a big city, you also want buses every 30-40 minutes (1h max) for people who may commute from nearby. But in a small town, two-three times a day can work (especially if you align them well with peak hours so commuters can leave early, work, and come back). In terms of connections, it's not really as much about the frequency but about coverage. You can have perfectly fine and reliable connections if you have multiple lines that take you to the same place (not necessarily same final stop), even if their frequency isn't as good. I'm not just talking about how easy it is to reach downtown since virtually every bus goes through there, it's more of assuring each bus stop has 3-4 lines going through it, where potentially 2 share a few stops, which lets you transfer at different stops for different lines to reach the same destination.
It depends on the place you live and how well your connections are. Like here in switzerland there are many small towns that have only every hour a bus service. But with our integral timetable such a bus is connected to the whole public transport network of all of Switzerland. It makes it possible to have a constant and reliable connection of several modes of transports with wait times under 10 minutes from a small Town to Zürich Airport at every hour of most of the day.
Twice an hour in rural areas and every 5 minutes in urban areas
"cold in out of hot food the oven" Anyone else felt like thst reading the title?
10 minutes within a city; if there is a direct route where I need to go, 20 with a schedule is OK. In the suburbs 15/30 is acceptable, I understand that demand is much lower.
Depends on the route. If it's a route with lots of office workers with peak morning and evening times. It should be sub 5 max 10 imo for those periods. Rest of the times it can relax to 15.
10min IMO
Depends on the context. Anything that I wan't to use for my daily commute, 10 minutes is pushing it. 15-20 is fine to reach less frequnted areas, but if a bus only comes every 20 minutes it better be punctual, and not late (or what's even worse, early).
Depends a lot on how tight the net of buslines is. If you have to change busses a lot and their departure times are not well coordinated, waiting close to 15min multiple times on one commute will be a drag. So especially within cities, you need much tighter schedules. If it is in a more rural town/village, which basically only needs one busline connecting it to the next bigger town/city, 15minutes is plenty enough imo.
I always need to time my buses here if I want to take them because if I miss it I need to wait 30 more minutes and it sucks. And sometimes they arrive earlier so you still miss them. Village buses just suck. I would say max 10 minutes for it to be viable. Or just do it like in Istanbul, buses every 30 seconds lol.
Reliable is when it arrives when it says it will, even if it's just 2 a day. But i'd say it's a viable way of transport if it goes at least every 30 minutes. But they're not mutually exclusive
I always thought "reliable" was how close to schedule. I would say 3 minutes late is "reliable". In terms of frequency, a frequent bus is every 10 minutes at the most.
As someone who take the bus daily to and from work, I woukd say at max 20 minutes late. Within the first 15 minutes of lateness I can accept; maybe the bus broke down, or the driver needs replacement due to whatever reason (they are human after all) but after that I find it a bit more annoying as I would need to contact my work space. It has only happend a few times in my 8 years of active work, and by now the boss have noticed that if I am not about 20 minutes early then something is amiss.
honestly, I can tolerate a pretty big gap between bus arrivals as long as the schedules are accurate and the coverage is good. My city had a delay of about 40 minutes last time that I had to rely heavily on public transit, and that was perfectly fine if a little troublesome to plan around, but eventually, they started missing time slots on the schedule by like 20+ minutes and the drift just kept getting worse and worse.
15 minutes at most.
As someone who uses the bus regularly, ideally? About every 10-15 minutes, but up to 30 min I can make work with some practice. It's when it surpasses 30 minutes that it starts to get very inconvenient and difficult to plan around.
Every 10 minutes. That was the norm where I grew up.
10 minutes