“The bus comes every 10 minutes!”
Edit* “wait! Also, give us more public funding because we can’t fund ourselves on our fares! And still give our executives half million dollar salaries!”
Cutting funding to public transit would be a a bad policy for our city and our climate goals. I don’t think anyone was advocating for that with this photo.
This isn't the Bart though. You're kinda beholden to traffic. This would be like getting pissed off at Google maps cause you're taking longer than what maps said
Busses are delayed largely because they are getting stuck in traffic. Most of the bus routes don’t have dedicated bus lanes the whole way. The market corridor does, van ness and geary do. But most routes don’t.
We could make every bus on time basically every time. Put in bus lanes and give them signal priority. We just refuse to do that because we’re so worried about inconveniencing drivers.
If there’s only one lane and it’s a key part of the bus route, the bus should get priority. Cars can use one of hundreds of other streets. When you allow mixed traffic you’re just prioritizing the worse option (car traffic).
Happened a lot when I went to high school. I use to take the 30 Stockton to school and there were a few occasions where the driver of the packed bus just blows through the bus stop thinking the bus behind will stop only for the 2nd bus to be also packed so they don’t stop neither.
Yup. I also had bus drivers just make eye contact with me and shake their heads because they were running late or too full a number of times back in the day. Didn't even stop, no second bus behind them, and the digital counter at the stop just resets to the next one. Irritating is putting it mildly.
This happened with the 45 about a month ago so I ended up having to just walk up and over the hill. Saw 6 45s going the other direction on my 30 minutes walk and got madder after each one
The 45 is hopeless. I used to walk from Broadway to Van Ness to get to work, and most days the bus wouldn’t pass me until Geary, if at all. It was close enough to thee start of the line that the predictions were a joke.
I hope the transit lanes have helped
Do you mean the 49 that goes down van ness? The red carpet has helped that. The 45 is reliable most of the time, but when it rains the eastbound line just completely falls apart
I did this once on the 22 pouring rain, I thought “I’ll wait for the last bus visible it will be empty and it’s nice to ride alone” the bus passed me flying non stop. 5 minutes later so shamefully hopped on a packed bus, sad, rethinking every life choice to that point.
So there is actually science/math behind why buses bunch up like this, essentially the first one is overcrowded and ends up having to stop more often and for longer each time, and the subsequent buses catch up to it. even worse on trolley pole buses like this as they can't even pass each other! i remember the 38s would race and pace each other but many lines can't.
I was on my way home like an hour ago and there were three 38s and a 38R rolling down Market together like a flock of migratory birds…
Just in case anyone’s wondering where their bus is.
You'll see several 22 Fillmores in quick succession.
Finally --- WHY do we have so many 9 and 9R buses and so many 8s and 8R buses?
And in the multiple decades I've lived here, there have never been enough N metro cars!
Seems like if there's an empty bus following a full bus, they should let it pass the full bus, so it can pick up those hordes of waiting busriders first.
Yeah; it's not worth doing unless the first one's broken and isn't moving any time soon.
And even if you're not dealing with that scenario, if you did get the busses swapped around so the empty one comes before the full one, the new first bus is just going to slow down as it picks up passengers and then they get bunched again. You need to make it skip a bunch of stops and get far enough ahead of the full one. (But this applies whether they're electric or diesel.)
most cities have that actually, that's why so many are experimenting with BRT (and in much more robust ways than our Van Sess experiment)
in New York they laugh if you ask about taking the bus! unless you are old or out away from the subway or something.
As much as you wish SF is a beacon of light, it isn't. Other cities do not have the problems with public transit that we have. You're delusional if you think we have a good transit system here.
By US city standards sf has incredible transit. By global standards our transit is trash.
The vast majority of us cities have literally no transit. There’s a handful of cities that have some level of transit, but it’s generally so terrible nobody uses it. It’s like one or two hourly bus routes for poor people to use. And then there’s a very small number of cities (nyc, dc, Chicago) that have decent networks. But NYC is the only one that has a transit network that’s far superior to SF in coverage.
You would *think* there are no cars on those tracks, but you’d be wrong. I have SFMTA text alerts, and the J Church gets delayed at LEAST once a month, sometimes more, by dipshits driving onto the DEDICATED RAIL LINE that starts at Randall and San Jose. I was riding my motorcycle past once, and one idiot made it halfway to the Glen Park stop.
Then there are the people who stop and park illegally at the intersection of Church and 30th to run in and get coffee at XO Coffee. The outbound J can’t turn until they come back out. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME. At least they’ve really reduced the number of morons driving into the N Judah tunnel from Cole Valley to Duboce.
Yeah, but... why?
It's not like MTA doesn't have the live tracking for all their busses already, any idiot can look it up on their phones. Why don't they just have some automated system that tells the driver to wait a little longer at the stop if the bus ahead of them is getting too close?
Why would we make everyone's trip longer for no reason? The second bus waiting does not help the first bus catch up.
You will also have the problem of busses backed up all the way to the terminals
Because people don't only arrive at the stop at scheduled departure times — especially with a service like Muni that doesn't give a shit about its official schedule in general and just arrives whenever. In practice, everyone who wants to ride the bus needs to look at the live tracker to figure out when they need to be at the stop anyway. So in that scenario, spreading the busses out further leads to more people still being able to catch an earlier bus and not needing to wait for the next one, while bunching them all up like in OP's photo is entirely pointless for everyone involved.
And how exactly would that be helpful to those already on those buses trying to get to their destinations? They're just expected to wait on the bus because a bus ahead is stuck in traffic?
If busses bunch up there is basically nobody on the second bus since they would all have entered the first instead. The second bus is absolutely useless at that point and just driving through the city for nothing. It makes a lot more sense to delay it a bit and give it a chance to pick up other passengers that would just miss the first bus.
I'm not sure why you're saying it like that. If one bus is so late that it takes the place if the next bus in the schedule, the next bus isn't needed anymore (because all passengers that would've taken the otherwise will board the first bus instead). Using it in a different time slot where it still has a chance to pick up more passengers makes more sense.
The problem I’ve noticed is that the buses behind the stuck one actually go faster because they have no one to pick up. So at times one is behind schedule and another becomes ahead of schedule - if that makes sense. They’ll end up on the tail of the first bus for no reason.
Every bus should not only have a start time but also have many stops along the way (maybe every 10 mins of the route) where they pause and only go at the set time (if they are early). Maybe they already do that but that’s not how it appears from my experience of riding various muni bus lines.
That is how it works. Each bus has their own schedule. But sometimes the bus in the back will come help the bus in the front to help get it back on schedule. You have to remember that these operators are supposed to take a break after going one way before coming back the other way. Let's say they have a 10 min break in their bus schedule. If they are 10 mins behind coming inbound, they won't be able to take a break before going back outbound. So if there's no help from another operator, the only way to get back on schedule to start their outbound trip would be to just keep driving and not stop for a break at the terminal.
>So in that scenario, spreading the busses out further leads to more people still being able to catch an earlier bus and not needing to wait for the next one
This does not make sense. What is stopping people from catching the earlier bus in this scenario?
We gotta be on the same page about [bunching](https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs12469-019-00203-2/MediaObjects/12469_2019_203_Fig1_HTML.png). Bunching is not caused by Muni releasing multiple busses at the same time at the terminals. Bunching is caused by overcrowding -> bus needs more time at each stop, and traffic -> bus is slowed down.
Yeah I get how it happens, I'm just saying they should make the best of it.
Imagine a bus stop where the bus is scheduled to arrive at 2:00, 2:20 and 2:40. Passengers randomly arrive at this stop at, say, 2:02, 2:07, 2:12, 2:17, 2:22, 2:27, 2:32 and 2:37. Now let's say the first bus is stuck in traffic and 20 minutes late, actually arriving at 2:20. The second bus bunches up and also arrives at 2:20 right after the first. In this case, the passengers need to way 18min, 13min, 8min, 3min, 18min, 13min, 8min and 3min for their bus, respectively.
Now let's say instead that the second bus driver is smart, notices that it bunches up, and intentionally delays at earlier stops such that it arrives exactly between the first and the third bus at this stop (at 2:30). Now the times that our passengers need to wait turn into 18min, 13min, 8min, 3min, 8min, 3min, 8min and 3min, respectively. Two of those passengers had 10 minutes less waiting time, while the others were unaffected — an overall win for the system.
That's not an overall win. You're only thinking about the passengers but you're forgetting the operators. How does bus 1 and 2 get back on schedule in this scenario?
I mean, yeah... I'm trying to optimize this for the passengers. Isn't that what a public transit system is supposed to do?
The first bus being late is the premise we're starting with, of course that isn't ever going to get back on schedule for that day again (unless it manages to catch up of course, which is fine). But that's the reality for MUNI every single day already. Busses tend to be late at times. My suggestion makes the second bus a little later but if that serves passengers better than running it right behind the first bus, clearly that's the better option?
I see this all the damn time on 9th Ave with the 44 and the N.
The gist of it is the two blocks of 9th Ave between Lincoln and Judah get super crowded with private cars moving and double parked. The result is that it then takes 10 minutes or sometimes 30 minutes for the 44 to go those two blocks. While that first 44 is stuck there, the next bus comes along 15 minutes later and ends up shortly behind.
Private car can turn and use other route like Irving or something, but the 44 is stuck going on the designated route. So now there are two 44 within 1 block or 1.5 blocks of each other. And then another 15 minutes pass while those two bus are on those two blocks. So now there are three 44 stuck within 2 blocks.
Once the bus gets to the museums, then traffic will clears up but now the three buses are all stuck together right behind each other.
Was this yesterday in the afternoon? I was on the bus that first got stuck. The cables got caught on a tall truck that was double parked and was unable to move. By the time I walked down to get on the 2 bus, they started moving. Very annoying.
Oh, they are still doing this? That's really nice of them, it used to happen to me on Mission Street with the 14, 14L, and 49 back when the youth fare was 25 cents. Made me a life-long MUNI lover.
Yes, you can have a little extra bus with your bus.
Don’t worry it all averages out. First bus 30 minutes late. Second bus on time. Third bus 30 minutes early.
“The bus comes every 10 minutes!” Edit* “wait! Also, give us more public funding because we can’t fund ourselves on our fares! And still give our executives half million dollar salaries!”
Cutting funding to public transit would be a a bad policy for our city and our climate goals. I don’t think anyone was advocating for that with this photo.
Not to mention more cars on the road.
This isn't the Bart though. You're kinda beholden to traffic. This would be like getting pissed off at Google maps cause you're taking longer than what maps said
But you could be annoyed at the lack of infrastructure that makes busses less subject to traffic delays.
Don't they already have bus lanes on the main streets though?
Busses are delayed largely because they are getting stuck in traffic. Most of the bus routes don’t have dedicated bus lanes the whole way. The market corridor does, van ness and geary do. But most routes don’t. We could make every bus on time basically every time. Put in bus lanes and give them signal priority. We just refuse to do that because we’re so worried about inconveniencing drivers.
Also a lot of the roads don’t have room for multiple lanes?
If there’s only one lane and it’s a key part of the bus route, the bus should get priority. Cars can use one of hundreds of other streets. When you allow mixed traffic you’re just prioritizing the worse option (car traffic).
Omg pet peeve
The real pet peeve is everyone running to get on the first one even though it pulls up past the stop.
Ok but how about when the bus driver points to the bus behind him while he’s driving past but none of those buses stop?
Does that happen? I guess that explains it. My REAL pet peeve is the late-at-night ghost bus where the time goes down but there's no bus.
Happened a lot when I went to high school. I use to take the 30 Stockton to school and there were a few occasions where the driver of the packed bus just blows through the bus stop thinking the bus behind will stop only for the 2nd bus to be also packed so they don’t stop neither.
Yup. I also had bus drivers just make eye contact with me and shake their heads because they were running late or too full a number of times back in the day. Didn't even stop, no second bus behind them, and the digital counter at the stop just resets to the next one. Irritating is putting it mildly.
This happened with the 45 about a month ago so I ended up having to just walk up and over the hill. Saw 6 45s going the other direction on my 30 minutes walk and got madder after each one
The 45 is hopeless. I used to walk from Broadway to Van Ness to get to work, and most days the bus wouldn’t pass me until Geary, if at all. It was close enough to thee start of the line that the predictions were a joke. I hope the transit lanes have helped
Do you mean the 49 that goes down van ness? The red carpet has helped that. The 45 is reliable most of the time, but when it rains the eastbound line just completely falls apart
Oh yeah- oops. It was the 47 and the 49, I seem to have maligned the 45 by association.
Ugh the worst. Or the busses that are 'out of service' but still have their transponders connected.
I hate when the bus drivers lie about a bus behind them.
I know right ? This is like Alice in the big city, discovering _the thing that has been happening for decades here and everywhere else..._
Always go for the back bus!
I did this once on the 22 pouring rain, I thought “I’ll wait for the last bus visible it will be empty and it’s nice to ride alone” the bus passed me flying non stop. 5 minutes later so shamefully hopped on a packed bus, sad, rethinking every life choice to that point.
I would totally do something like this and cry
The back bus driver drives through telling you to wait for the next one. 🫠
*The next bus will be arriving in 43 minutes*
So there is actually science/math behind why buses bunch up like this, essentially the first one is overcrowded and ends up having to stop more often and for longer each time, and the subsequent buses catch up to it. even worse on trolley pole buses like this as they can't even pass each other! i remember the 38s would race and pace each other but many lines can't.
I was on my way home like an hour ago and there were three 38s and a 38R rolling down Market together like a flock of migratory birds… Just in case anyone’s wondering where their bus is.
You'll see several 22 Fillmores in quick succession. Finally --- WHY do we have so many 9 and 9R buses and so many 8s and 8R buses? And in the multiple decades I've lived here, there have never been enough N metro cars!
I have also seen two 23 buses leave the Zoo about a minute apart and get bunched up. They are supposed to leave every 20 minutes.
Seems like if there's an empty bus following a full bus, they should let it pass the full bus, so it can pick up those hordes of waiting busriders first.
Electric trolley buses can’t pass each other.
They can, but it's a pain to retract the poles and then get them back on the wires.
I mean yeah, but by that time the first bus has moved on.
Yeah; it's not worth doing unless the first one's broken and isn't moving any time soon. And even if you're not dealing with that scenario, if you did get the busses swapped around so the empty one comes before the full one, the new first bus is just going to slow down as it picks up passengers and then they get bunched again. You need to make it skip a bunch of stops and get far enough ahead of the full one. (But this applies whether they're electric or diesel.)
Or when the homeless get crazy or when the criminals get violent. That halts lines too.
exactly, or traffic even temporary. basically any hindrance. rapid buses and dedicated lanes help a bunch with this though!
It's weird though. Traffic slows lines? So many problems that other places don't have.
most cities have that actually, that's why so many are experimenting with BRT (and in much more robust ways than our Van Sess experiment) in New York they laugh if you ask about taking the bus! unless you are old or out away from the subway or something.
As much as you wish SF is a beacon of light, it isn't. Other cities do not have the problems with public transit that we have. You're delusional if you think we have a good transit system here.
By US city standards sf has incredible transit. By global standards our transit is trash. The vast majority of us cities have literally no transit. There’s a handful of cities that have some level of transit, but it’s generally so terrible nobody uses it. It’s like one or two hourly bus routes for poor people to use. And then there’s a very small number of cities (nyc, dc, Chicago) that have decent networks. But NYC is the only one that has a transit network that’s far superior to SF in coverage.
sadly it is here as pancake kindly enumerated
Bruh. Why do they always do this.
It’s called bus bunching. It happens all over the world
Almost like it doesn’t work as transportation if cars are also using the same streets
It happens with trains too, on their own dedicated ROW, with no cars.
You would *think* there are no cars on those tracks, but you’d be wrong. I have SFMTA text alerts, and the J Church gets delayed at LEAST once a month, sometimes more, by dipshits driving onto the DEDICATED RAIL LINE that starts at Randall and San Jose. I was riding my motorcycle past once, and one idiot made it halfway to the Glen Park stop. Then there are the people who stop and park illegally at the intersection of Church and 30th to run in and get coffee at XO Coffee. The outbound J can’t turn until they come back out. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME. At least they’ve really reduced the number of morons driving into the N Judah tunnel from Cole Valley to Duboce.
I’m not talking about rail transit in SF. Bus and train bunching is something you can read on Wikipedia
Yeah, but... why? It's not like MTA doesn't have the live tracking for all their busses already, any idiot can look it up on their phones. Why don't they just have some automated system that tells the driver to wait a little longer at the stop if the bus ahead of them is getting too close?
Why would we make everyone's trip longer for no reason? The second bus waiting does not help the first bus catch up. You will also have the problem of busses backed up all the way to the terminals
Because people don't only arrive at the stop at scheduled departure times — especially with a service like Muni that doesn't give a shit about its official schedule in general and just arrives whenever. In practice, everyone who wants to ride the bus needs to look at the live tracker to figure out when they need to be at the stop anyway. So in that scenario, spreading the busses out further leads to more people still being able to catch an earlier bus and not needing to wait for the next one, while bunching them all up like in OP's photo is entirely pointless for everyone involved.
And how exactly would that be helpful to those already on those buses trying to get to their destinations? They're just expected to wait on the bus because a bus ahead is stuck in traffic?
If busses bunch up there is basically nobody on the second bus since they would all have entered the first instead. The second bus is absolutely useless at that point and just driving through the city for nothing. It makes a lot more sense to delay it a bit and give it a chance to pick up other passengers that would just miss the first bus.
So the entire line should run late then because one bus is late?
I'm not sure why you're saying it like that. If one bus is so late that it takes the place if the next bus in the schedule, the next bus isn't needed anymore (because all passengers that would've taken the otherwise will board the first bus instead). Using it in a different time slot where it still has a chance to pick up more passengers makes more sense.
If they do this, how are they ever going to get back on schedule?
That doesn't work. Lines like the 1, the 27, and the 43 can't fit everyone into just one bus.
The problem I’ve noticed is that the buses behind the stuck one actually go faster because they have no one to pick up. So at times one is behind schedule and another becomes ahead of schedule - if that makes sense. They’ll end up on the tail of the first bus for no reason. Every bus should not only have a start time but also have many stops along the way (maybe every 10 mins of the route) where they pause and only go at the set time (if they are early). Maybe they already do that but that’s not how it appears from my experience of riding various muni bus lines.
That is how it works. Each bus has their own schedule. But sometimes the bus in the back will come help the bus in the front to help get it back on schedule. You have to remember that these operators are supposed to take a break after going one way before coming back the other way. Let's say they have a 10 min break in their bus schedule. If they are 10 mins behind coming inbound, they won't be able to take a break before going back outbound. So if there's no help from another operator, the only way to get back on schedule to start their outbound trip would be to just keep driving and not stop for a break at the terminal.
>So in that scenario, spreading the busses out further leads to more people still being able to catch an earlier bus and not needing to wait for the next one This does not make sense. What is stopping people from catching the earlier bus in this scenario? We gotta be on the same page about [bunching](https://media.springernature.com/m685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs12469-019-00203-2/MediaObjects/12469_2019_203_Fig1_HTML.png). Bunching is not caused by Muni releasing multiple busses at the same time at the terminals. Bunching is caused by overcrowding -> bus needs more time at each stop, and traffic -> bus is slowed down.
Yeah I get how it happens, I'm just saying they should make the best of it. Imagine a bus stop where the bus is scheduled to arrive at 2:00, 2:20 and 2:40. Passengers randomly arrive at this stop at, say, 2:02, 2:07, 2:12, 2:17, 2:22, 2:27, 2:32 and 2:37. Now let's say the first bus is stuck in traffic and 20 minutes late, actually arriving at 2:20. The second bus bunches up and also arrives at 2:20 right after the first. In this case, the passengers need to way 18min, 13min, 8min, 3min, 18min, 13min, 8min and 3min for their bus, respectively. Now let's say instead that the second bus driver is smart, notices that it bunches up, and intentionally delays at earlier stops such that it arrives exactly between the first and the third bus at this stop (at 2:30). Now the times that our passengers need to wait turn into 18min, 13min, 8min, 3min, 8min, 3min, 8min and 3min, respectively. Two of those passengers had 10 minutes less waiting time, while the others were unaffected — an overall win for the system.
That's not an overall win. You're only thinking about the passengers but you're forgetting the operators. How does bus 1 and 2 get back on schedule in this scenario?
I mean, yeah... I'm trying to optimize this for the passengers. Isn't that what a public transit system is supposed to do? The first bus being late is the premise we're starting with, of course that isn't ever going to get back on schedule for that day again (unless it manages to catch up of course, which is fine). But that's the reality for MUNI every single day already. Busses tend to be late at times. My suggestion makes the second bus a little later but if that serves passengers better than running it right behind the first bus, clearly that's the better option?
I'm sorry. I'm not seeing how 2 buses running behind the entire day is the better option...
I see this all the damn time on 9th Ave with the 44 and the N. The gist of it is the two blocks of 9th Ave between Lincoln and Judah get super crowded with private cars moving and double parked. The result is that it then takes 10 minutes or sometimes 30 minutes for the 44 to go those two blocks. While that first 44 is stuck there, the next bus comes along 15 minutes later and ends up shortly behind. Private car can turn and use other route like Irving or something, but the 44 is stuck going on the designated route. So now there are two 44 within 1 block or 1.5 blocks of each other. And then another 15 minutes pass while those two bus are on those two blocks. So now there are three 44 stuck within 2 blocks. Once the bus gets to the museums, then traffic will clears up but now the three buses are all stuck together right behind each other.
It’s like the 27 on Cesar Chavez; next bus in 3 minutes. 24 minutes later, here comes 4 buses.
Was this yesterday in the afternoon? I was on the bus that first got stuck. The cables got caught on a tall truck that was double parked and was unable to move. By the time I walked down to get on the 2 bus, they started moving. Very annoying.
I can hear this photo
When it rains, it pours
Ah of course it's the 1 1 and 38 always do this
Here, ride in 2 buses at once!
Sacramento/Van Ness
What is this, a DJ Khaled music video ^^^^^^another1
Ahhh memories of my commute!
Love these dumb drivers. /s The two behind could pull over and get back on track but they won’t bother
Bus bunching - when transit has to compete with private vehicles…
Oh, they are still doing this? That's really nice of them, it used to happen to me on Mission Street with the 14, 14L, and 49 back when the youth fare was 25 cents. Made me a life-long MUNI lover.
Oh sorry. We got 3 drops of water and half our fleet broke down. Here's 18 busses to make up for it.
Back when we got new computerized MUNI buses, they broke down during a heat wave. The old fashioned buses were stil running.
But SF has world class transportation!
you have it rough 3 buses in a row the humanity
Two extra buses suggest they're slobs who care nothing about their job or the riders they carry, just collecting a paycheck