“Public transit stupidity is a mathematical inevitability”
From Weird Science at Ars Technica:
This is something I see almost every day in the New York City Transit system. A bus pulls up at a stop that’s so densely packed with commuters that they practically explode out when the doors are opened. Less than a minute later, it’s followed by a pair of nearly empty busses, running along the same route. Apparently, that’s a mathematical inevitability, termed the “Equal Headway Instability.”
The authors of this paper create a model that can reproduce the equal headway problem, and then try various solutions under the assumption that the current behavior seriously annoys commuters. Unfortunately, none of their solutions — minimum and maximum waiting times at stops, limited boarding, etc. — work well under all conditions, and the authors recognize that having commuters watch an unfilled bus pull away is also going to piss them off. The solutions, not surprisingly, are basic commute manners: stand away from the doors, let people out first, and don’t pile into an overstuffed bus. Conductors have been saying all of that for years—good luck getting impatient commuters to go along.
This would of course explain much of the chaos — pandemonium, really — that I see every day. Or, at least, every day I am in Edmonton and have to take the bus or LRT to work. There’s just reams of rampant stupidity to be seen at the South Campus transit station on any given day.
Not that ETS helps matters with their bus scheduling.
