Surprised by the math on bus dwell time at rush hour

I used to complain every morning about the bus stopping at every corner downtown. Then last Tuesday I sat up front and caught the driver's screen showing the schedule. Turns out each stop adds about 40 seconds on average, and cutting just three stops shaves two minutes off the whole route. I found the city's transit report online after that, and it said late buses cost riders more lost time than all the stops combined. So I shifted my stop to the one two blocks further and now I actually board at a time that's never listed on the sign. Who knew being picky about your starting point beats griping about the ride? Has anyone else checked their route's timing breakdown and found a similar weird fix?

1 comments

1 Comment

the_anthony29d agoMost Upvoted

Hold on, that math seems a little off... 40 seconds per stop times three stops is only two minutes if those are the longest stops. But most dwell time includes the door opening and closing, which happens even if nobody gets on or off. So you're still paying that fixed cost at every stop, the 40 seconds is just the extra time for people moving. I checked my route once and found that skipping one busy stop saved maybe 15 seconds, not 40.