The United States needs fewer bus stops

From the article:

American bus stops are often significantly closer together than European ones. The mean stop spacing in the United States is around 313 meters, which is about five stops per mile. However, in older, larger American cities, stops are placed even closer. In Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, the mean spacing drops down to 223 meters, 214 meters, and 248 meters respectively, meaning as many as eight stops per mile. By contrast, in Europe it’s more common to see spacings of 300 to 450 meters, roughly four stops per mile. An additional 500 feet takes between 1.5 and 2.5 minutes to walk at the average pace of 2.5 to 4 miles per hour.

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Close stop spacing slows buses down. When a bus stops, it loses time as passengers get on and off the bus (dwell time). The bus also needs to decelerate and accelerate; it may need to kneel (hydraulically lower itself to the floor and back up again to let strollers, wheelchairs, and mobility vehicles on); it may need to leave traffic and return into traffic; and it may miss a light cycle (non-dwell time). Buses spend about 20 percent of their time stopping then starting again.

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Close stop spacing also creates lower quality bus stops. In the US, the sheer number of bus stops means that agencies can’t invest meaningfully in each one. This results in many stops being ‘little more than a pole with a sign’, lacking basic amenities like shelters, benches, or real-time arrival information. Uneven and cracked sidewalks and a lack of shelter or seating present a particular challenge for elderly and disabled riders.

By contrast, a bus stop in a French city like Marseille will have shelters and seating by default. Higher quality stops in the city also include real time arrival information, better lighting for safety, level boarding platforms, curb extensions that prevent illegal parking at bus stops, and improved pedestrian infrastructure leading to the stops. Marseille is not a particularly wealthy French city, but because it has wider stop spacing and fewer stops, it can invest more money into each one.

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A McGill study found that even substantial stop consolidation only reduced system coverage by one percent. A different study modeled a stop balancing proposal for San Luis Obispo, and found that even a 44 percent reduction in stops would have only a 13 percent reduction in coverage area. New York’s transit authority increased the distance between stops on a local route from ten to seven stops per mile (a 42 percent increase in distance between stops) but estimated that the average walking distance went up by only 12 percent.

Buses that move more quickly can traverse their routes more times per day. That means that achieving the same frequency requires fewer drivers as the speed of the journey goes up. Because labor is the largest expense of running a service, faster buses are cheaper to run.

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In Vancouver, stop balancing on one route saved the transit operator $700,000 CAD (about $500,000) in annual operating costs owing to peak vehicle savings. They estimate they will save a further $3.5 million each year by cutting stops across their 25 most frequent routes. In the study from McGill on Montreal’s operator, stop balancing had the potential to ‘save a bus’ (reduce the total buses needed each day by one) on 44 routes.

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Vancouver found that stop balancing improved the reliability of Line 2, especially on the slowest trips. This helps passengers plan their journeys and agencies maintain more accurate schedules, reducing the need for excess recovery time at the end of routes. If agencies want to maximize the benefit of stop balancing on reliability, they can incorporate passenger boarding variability into their stop consolidation program, as McGill University did in their proposal for Montreal’s Bus Network.