> I suspect that removing half of the bus stops in a city will piss people off and cause even less ridership.

Oh do you now? Where do these suspicions come from? How much time do you spend on city busses? Do you have any idea how absolutely infuriating it is to be sitting on a bus while it makes stop, after stop, after stop, after stop, every single one a block or two apart, crawling down the road at a walking pace? All the while backing up traffic behind it and eroding whatever support the transit system had with the majority of the tax-paying public that never uses it.

I suspect that people find a destination on Google Maps, click the navigate button, see that the bus takes 3x as long as driving, and take their car or an Uber.

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VLM 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	pkulak 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> 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.