I would agree with and extend your remarks that we also have problems where traffic patterns and geography don't match political boundaries and transit is traditionally locally run and locally budgeted.
So in the USA you end in scenarios where it takes 20 minutes to drive 20 miles but a bus would take four legs with three transfers across three separate city bus companies, figure at least three hours each way. And again, as per your "mass transit" you can't expect taxpayers in my city to provide a special bus run into my neighboring adjacent city much less the city next to that one.
This results in people being very happy indeed to pay the financial and environmental costs of car ownership to avoid sitting in a bus for six hours of daily commute.
There are also interesting social issues; if you're late its a personal failing, even if you take mass transit. I recall a friend at work getting fired because the bus was late too many times. Oh well, should have bought a car. The feeling of not being in control is further worse due to crime rates. No one will sneak up on my wife and stab her in the neck in her car, but it certainly happens on buses and no one cares if it happens depending on local race relations. None of the other passengers on the bus even cared, for racial reasons. Its pretty messed up here.
Its easy for the public in general to advise others to do inconvenient or career ending or life threatening activities, to "save the planet" or whatever, but I wouldn't do it, and I'd certainly never let my wife or kids do it, so we own cars and avoid public transit at all costs. Not taking that advice as been pretty nice so far.
You're making suspicions about suspicions without numerical data.
According to my cities 2022 annual report (where are 2023-2025?) they provided precisely 464344 unlinked pax trips (UPT) so someone stepped aboard a bus and threw money in the real or virtual fare box 464344 times that year. "Sources of operating funds expended directly generated" which I read as annual fare revenue was $660748.
We have a very simple two tier system $2 for adults and $1 for seniors and disabled. 2(464344-x)+1x=660748 x=267940
So we only had 196404 healthy young adult bus riders that year vs 267940 senior citizens. Your experience is not unusual but also is by far not the majority; a SUBSTANTIAL majority of the people on the bus in my city are too old or too sick or too blind to take long walks in the rain, snow, ice, heat, cold, etc.
Honestly the bus is so slow, if they could walk, they'd probably just walk. So it should not be overly surprising that most on the bus quite literally can't walk, and really need bus stops close together for disability reasons.
So all of this theoretical "well it would be so much faster if there were fewer stops" is irrelevant if the served population is primarily physically disabled, and the system can't survive. And we'd be talking about excluding one of the most powerful voting blocks in the city, that being old people. Eliminating stops would eliminate or reduce 58% of the current riders which would shut the system down, I don't think it could politically survive a hit like that.
Ironically that shutdown might be good as everyone would be better off both financially and environmentally in cars than in buses. Bus exhaust is not exactly perfume to mother nature LOL, and essentially our bus program is not a transit system, its a corrupt jobs program for drivers, mechanics, and especially for highly paid administrators.
> a SUBSTANTIAL majority of the people on the bus in my city are too old or too sick or too blind to take long walks in the rain, snow, ice, heat, cold, etc.
Maybe my city is different, but in every city I've spent substantial time in, there are little tiny busses for those who are not able to walk or roll the average distance between a stop and their home or destination. They are direct, point to point shuttles. If no bus is available, they will send a cab. Those buses and cabs are exactly why you don't have to run a bus up and down every road, with a stop in front of every house, and a driver who can escort passengers to their door. They are astronomically expensive to operate, but the only way to make a transit system that serves everyone.
But in my city, we pay a small fortune to run these little busses, and then _also_, for some reason, assume that no one riding the main system has any mobility.
Also, I'd argue that the reason a "substantial majority" of your transit population is "old, sick, or blind" is because it's such an unattractive option for anyone who has a choice. When the bus is slower than riding your bike, you're not getting Olympic athletes on that thing.
In 2022 according to the transit system annual report, the suburban quarter million person city I live in has ten routes and operates about 12 hours per day and per the annual report average weekday service consumed is 1556 UPT, so 1556 people step aboard the system and toss coins in the fare jar or pay with the app. UPT means they're not tracking transfers and essentially 100% of trips require a transfer so the real number of people served daily is closer to 775 than to 1550, but we'll run the optimistic numbers. Each of the ten hourly routes is about 4 miles long. So the overall system drives 12 hours * 10 routes * 4 miles * 5280 feet/mile = 2.5 million feet per day and divide that by 1556 passengers per day that's a pax every 1628 feet driven on an average day.
So if we had a bus stop every 800 feet, on average half the stops would be empty and passed by. If that high level of use is causing too much congestion and slow down at stops, if we had two buses running out of phase, pax arrive at the same rate, so we'd pick up a pax every 3000+ feet driven. So if we had bus stops every 500 feet to keep people happy, on average the bus would drive right by about 5 out of 6 empty stops, which seems reasonable and would not result in unusual delays or congestion. Also the bus would pass by every half hour not every hour, which would probably increase ridership a lot.
So if the only labor expense were the $23/hr driver, and we pay 10 drivers on 10 routes, to drive twelve times, thats $23/hr * 10 routes * 12 hours if everything except driver labor were free that means we spend $2760 per day to transport 1556 people, or about $1.77 per trip (assuming diesel is free, buses never wear out, etc). If we doubled the number of bus that would be $5520 of driver labor to move 1556 people per day or $3.55 cost per pax trip. On one hand the actual annual total "OE per UPT" counting weekends and maint and office people and dispatchers etc, according to the annual report is $13.94, so an extra $1.77 would seem cheap, but the bus does not run for free and the total expense of doubling the runs might cost as much as an extra $14 per pax trip.
The costs don't really matter, if the taxpayers want it as a luxury bragging feature of the city. Everyone wants everyone else to use it even though no one would be caught dead actually using it. My point being that adult fare is $2 but adults don't ride its mostly elderly and disabled at the $1 fare, so a profit (loss) ratio of (28 - 1)/28 with two buses per route isn't much worse than (14 - 1)/14 with one bus per route.
Maybe another way to look at the analysis is in my city if the stops are more than 1600 feet apart there will be multiple people per stop and that would "slow things down" whereas a small fraction like 400 feet would mean the bus mostly just speeds by.
No one can seem to explain why we can't have infinite bus stops. How about every stop sign is a bus stop? The bus has to stop anyway. Artificial scarcity to drive down ridership, I suppose.
Its a statement of religious belief, so other opinions are no less relevant that some "authority"
As a religious belief it would be inappropriate for me to report stats from my local cities bus service. First of all they didn't get into a religious opinion logically and rationally, so spouting numbers and facts at them will not make them change their mind. Secondly my local city has multiple simultaneous impacts so its almost impossible to estimate how their experiments with stop removal has affected ridership. The article falsely claims the only variable in the system is stop spacing whereas bus service is in extreme turmoil in most communities.
Pre-covid vs Post-covid is wildly different, there has been massive inflation in operating expenses, there's a long term decline in my area WRT passenger-miles before covid which seems to be increasing post-covid, fares have increased by a factor of a little over 4x since 1990 while incomes have roughly stagnated. The article claims the opex of stops is "high" but our city invested $0 (this is a low crime suburb LOL). We got rid of 1/4 of our routes (and drivers) and increased the standard of stop spacing from never more than 950 feet to an average of about 1100 feet now. The elderly and infirm were very mad and very loud about that and they are the most reliable voters out there but halving the fare quieted them down. We lose so much money on the bus service that giving it away for free wouldn't impact the budget very much.
Currently our opex per passenger mile is about $4.50. Fare for adults is $2. We lose about $7 per ride. The loss per rider would pay for two extra people to take an uber on the same route, so there are continual demands to scrap the entire system to save money. Empty buses driving around is causing more, not less, road congestion, and more, not less, environmental damage. Our "Unlinked Passenger Trip per Vehicle Revenue Mile" is about 0.6, which boils down to on average every mile traveled by a bus driver results in 0.6 passengers stepping aboard. Our routes are about 4 miles long and run about once an hour, so on average a driver picks up about three passengers per 4 mile trip. Our drivers are usually alone in the bus. Another way of looking at it, is on average we pay our bus drivers $23/hr, so an hourly route costs $23 in labor, and they pick up less than $6 in fares during each work hour... The ratios are better during rush hour... but worse outside of rush hour.
(edited: I don't understand some of the numbers on the report, if it costs $23 to pay the driver to run a route that picks up three people the fares can't be more than $6 so even if diesel and maint were free we lose $17 per hour per route, so why does the annual report claim opex per passenger mile traveled is only $4.50? After federal subsidies or similar?)
In the long run, an unusable bus service is simply too expensive of a luxury to fund and we'll end up eliminating it. I don't think changing distance between stops matters if the stops, and the bus, are empty, other than it makes sick and old people very angry. If almost no one uses it, it doesn't cost any extra to stop quite literally on every street corner or even stop at every driveway, so increasing stop distance merely makes people suffer needlessly, which seems unusually evil.
physical books were around three times more popular than ebooks or audiobooks.
75% did not read anything to children (kind of surprising 25% of the population has access to pre-literate children)
15% don't read books they own, which is surprisingly high. A third borrowed their books from the library.
54% of the population inaccurately think they "own" an ebook as opposed to reality. 40% "a book you accessed for free online" Sure thats all project gutenberg LOL.
Mysteries and Crime are top of the charts. I have no idea if "computer books" count as 11% other non-fiction or academic or hobbies.
Only 51% have a library card. I know they are cracking down hard at my library, show up physically with proof of residence or it gets cancelled. Its harder to get a library card in my community than to vote, get a job, or register for school, your community may vary.
Most people go to the library less than once a month. This sounds about right.
Shockingly 20% of people never go to the library just to hang out. As a parent of older kids I do that a LOT, drop them off then go silently read or compute or whatever at the library. The attempt at turning libraries from book warehouses into makerspaces seems to not be working very well according to this survey.
People own a surprisingly small number of books. A "large full height bookcase" puts you in the elite. I'm kind of surprised at that.
Virtually no one hoards digital or audio books, I am apparently a far extreme outlier in that regard LOL. I'm easily five figures each. From, uh, totally legit sources.
Most people actually own about two dozen books and think most other people own about twice as many around fifty.
Since I was a little kid I always read a little before bedtime and it seems this is very popular.
Most people don't organize their books but think they have an easy time finding them (not unlike how people organize computer files...)
Surprisingly there is zero to very minimal demographic difference in every category among people who do not read, which I find very surprising and unlikely.
The article shows how performance has always increased at a somewhat continually increasing level of inconvenience. Weird connectors, SUPER demanding power requirements, new case designs every generation, new cooling required every generation, etc.
My applications have remained the same for many years my octoprint and retropie don't require more FLOPs as time goes on but I'd really enjoy a modern board that has fewer headaches. Works on any normal USB port instead of requiring specialized power supplies, doesn't brown out and reset as much, doesn't heat up as much, etc. I suspect "a pi 3, but now with fewer headaches" would sell better than "a pi 3 but even more headaches and bigger numbers that you don't want".
I still use a PI3 as a daily driver. I never got around to the PI4 (too expensive, low availability), and when the PI 5 came along it was severely downgraded for my main usage purpose (x264/AVC playback) while much pricier too. I don't expect a further PI 6 will remedy this properly.
I've worked with DB people and running lines under driveways for telco and cableco is BIG business and they will not find your request to bury fiber or cat5 to be even remotely unusual.
The bad news about directional boring is they usually want "like a kilobuck" just to show up. Its a lot of heavy equipment and a lot of dudes to operate it all.
The good news is if they're already down the road they'll come by and bore for like $20/foot because its a small job (usually they only charge $10/foot for long runs)
Permitting depends a lot on where you live, some places treat it as a cash cow and they will brutally milk you, others don't require a permit at all. The equipment takes up a fair amount of space on each side, probably more than you'd expect. Scheduling is like dealing with an arborist. "OMG I need this partially collapsed tree removed immediately its an emergency I have homeowners insurance please arrive in the next hour" well thats multiple kilobucks "Meh please remove this tree sometime and I don't care when" well thats like $250, probably less if cash.
I've seen people spend thousands of dollars on DB or crazy laser/wireless comm gear to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on a stone mason. Try not to pay someone to DB under a stone wall, its usually cheaper to hire a stone mason twice and he will leave the wall in better condition than before you started. All masonry is temporary unless its maintained. Similar logic might apply to driveways, most concrete cracks so if you're hiring a guy to fix the crack you may want to bury a conduit before he fixes it. Replacing an entire driveway is expensive, replacing a sidewalk sized path is surprisingly cheap. If you want sidewalk poured (like for a walkway in your garden or around a swimming pool) its about $50/foot and a driveway would have to be thicker and better prepped, but the section could be narrower than a sidewalk. The point being don't accept a DB bid over $50/ft because its cheaper to replace the concrete at $50/ft.
There are simpler ways to get a conduit under a driveway than a huge DB machine. I'm boarding a flight, but look up using water (dig a pit on either side of the road, attach water hose to piece of conduit, and push the conduit under the driveway using the water to erode a hole as you go.)
The there are also smaller hydraulic ram tools designed for pushing a pipe under a driveway.
Probably should have mentioned that it's not a driveway in the US sense, where it's a strip of pavement with dirt on either side. More like a courtyard that butts up against the main house and guesthouse. There's no digging under it from the side.
I would guess directional boring. They can start a bore and sort of drive it around corners.
20 years ago when they were putting fiber in all over the place here, they would bore around a whole cul-de-sac in one go. In several cases breaking every water service line on their way through.
I pulled several thousand lines as a kid starting out in Gen-X era and you are completely correct with one scalability and labor cost issue:
Real cat5 and ethernet connectors just work and phone cable and phone plugs just work, but if you mix them you'll get all manner of expensive labor costs trying to figure out jury rigged solutions.
At one client they used two pair for business phone system, we're on a cable pulling team and one guy punches down the blue and green pairs the other side punches down blue and orange pairs (essentially a 568A vs 568B violation) and we spend SOME EXPENSIVE TIME trying to figure out why the cable toner "proves" we are on the same cable so it can't be a wiring fault.
Or the stereotype of the halfway colorblind guy at the far end working in the ceiling, on a ladder, in the dark, swaps the orange and brown pairs as happens sometimes.
Oh even funnier is there's always "that guy" who is too lazy to pull an additional cable to a new phone, so he steals some pairs from a nearby phone, somehow knocking out both phones in the process. Such a headache.
Labor for troubleshooting miswired cables/jacks is SO expensive its just cheaper at work to install phone lines using phone line parts and ethernet using ethernet parts.
The arrival of VOIP phones around Y2K, somewhat after my time, must make life so much easier. And now nobody uses wired phones everyone has a smartphone.
At home if you're doing one line and its a hobby so your time is free, then your strategy does work.
Soon we will have more participants in the HN comments for the study, than were studied in the study.
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