Bus bunching

[mettle]

no, not what happens with cheap underwear.

can anything be done to space out buses and streetcars? it saddens and puzzles me to see long, long line-ups and then four streetcars come in quick succession. the first one is inevitably packed and the rest are relatively empty. if they had been spaced out, the waiting time would've been shortened, the car loads more "balanced" and nobody's angry.

 

[mettle]

it just occurred to me that you guys must've talked about this before. if someone could post a link, i can read it myself.

 

[nstuch]

maybe because the TTC relies on the 1920s technology of guys hanging around on streetcorners with clipboards for efficiently dispatching vehicles.. why they can't use GPS and do it centrally is a mystery

 

[doady]

Bunching has nothing to do with the TTC not using GPS technology. The TTC can't prevent buses and streetcars from being late due to suddenly huge crowds or traffic congestion.

 

[building babel]

504 or 505 streetcars heading south from Broadview station quite often arrive in bunches, and I generally board them a mere four stops south of the Danforth. Yet sometimes there are gaps of fifteen or twenty minutes between them. I get the impression that there's no rhyme or reason to the timing of their departure.

 

[Canuck 36]

What about for the passengers on the second or third streetcar? Do the needs of the many outweight the needs of them few?

Who gets to be the lucky streetcar driver to announce...
"Uhh, this TTC (garble).... will be... (unintelligble).... as we will be (gibberish)... and (static noise). Thank you"

 

[building babel]

Also, I sense malice afoot when I sometimes board the 504 at King and Yonge, returning to the Winter Palace after a hard day's "work", only to be told at Sherbourne that it is short-turning at Parliament. Could the driver not have told us that, back at Yonge Street? Or have changed the sign on the front so that some of us could have taken the subway north instead? Furthermore, there's nothing worse than waiting in the middle of the winter on desolate King East with a bunch of shivering, evicted 504-ers for a following 504 that is always full of people, knowing that if you hadn't have gotten on the trick-504 you could have obtained a seat on the real-504 that followed it.

 

[RJR123]

What perplexes me is I sometimes see two or three bunched up at, say, King and Sherbourne. So the first will pick up the waiting passengers and proceed through the light, and then the second and sometimes the third will also go through the same light, right behind the first.

Would it not make more sense to let the first car go through and have the following car(s) wait until the next green light, so that at least you are putting some distance between the cars??

 

[Bogtrotter]

I live at Avenue and St. Clair and this 'bunching' seems to happen all the time. Two-three consecutive buses in a row followed by 15-20 mins of nothing. The 512 between stations is a very short route- I can't figure out why they can't time it more consistently.

 

[adma]

To me, streetcar bunching seems less habitual than on certain bus routes like Jane, where 20-minute waits for 2-or-more-bus convoys almost seem the rule even in rush periods...

 

[spmarshall]

What's making it worse are the low-floor buses. Three reasons:

1. More strollers than ever. Do people remember when only foldable strollers were permitted on transit. Even if non foldable, they were smaller than the giant ones now. I am seeing them on the buses all they time, and half the parents don't bother to position them so they aren't blocking the flow of passengers.

2. Rear doors that take forever to close. The older high-floor buses with their treadle doors were wonderful for opening and closing quickly. Instead it takes forever for those Orion VIIs with the push bars to close.

3. Poor capacity. In a New Look, it's easy to move around in, and for standees to move to the back. In Orion VIIs. I've seen (and been in) shouting matches with drivers and other passengers about not being able to move back. And some seats at the top are empty, but no one dares try to fit in those Lilliputan-legroom seats that I'm sure Air Canada is eyeing these days.

And the fact that service is not keeping up with demand. Ridership is growing faster than buses are arriving, and the new buses that are coming suck. There are also two more streetcar routes and fewer streetcars on the roads than in the early 1990s, when ridership was lower, so less streetcars to meet demand.

 

[cdl42]

The real questions are:
Does the TTC even try to run a regular service? Do they even care? Do they even see it as a problem?

 

[spmarshall]

What perplexes me is I sometimes see two or three bunched up at, say, King and Sherbourne. So the first will pick up the waiting passengers and proceed through the light, and then the second and sometimes the third will also go through the same light, right behind the first.

If they were smart, the supervisors would say to the first streetcar operator not to make stops to take on passengers if streetcars were bunched, to speed service and to even the loads. But that makes too much sense.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Finch East sees bunches of 3 or so buses at least every 8 minutes...they throw so many buses out there that they can't possibly maintain a buffer between them. Back when Finch had accordion buses, convoys of 4 would arrive every 5 minutes...

"no one dares try to fit in those Lilliputan-legroom seats that I'm sure Air Canada is eyeing these days."

Most people actually can and do fit in those seats, but from the front of the bus, it's impossible to see if any are available - and it's not like anyone would pipe up and say "c'mon on down" - then, getting up there is impossible because one guy is standing in front of the stairs and won't move.

"If they were smart, the supervisors would say to the first streetcar operator not to make stops to take on passengers if streetcars were bunched, to speed service and to even the loads. But that makes too much sense."

When this happens on bus routes the more empty ones at the back leapfrog the crowded ones. Sometimes (rarely) a driver will ask everyone not going straight to the subway to get on the next bus - probably just when he's running really late.

 

[wyliepoon]

Bunching has become the norm rather than the exception lately on my McCowan North route. Check out my classic bunching video...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3Q7BW1o95k

I took that video a year ago, when what was shown in that video didn't happen as regularly as it does these days, when it's an everyday occurance. The lineups to get onto the bus are much longer now than they were a year ago.

*****

Another thing to think about bunching is how it affects people riding in the second or third vehicles in the pack. To create distance between the vehicles, the drivers in the second and third ones drive really slow, or make unusually long stops at stations and at red lights. If you're pressed for time on your commute (or if you expect your bus to be travelling at a reasonable speed) you'd get really annoyed by that.