[AWolfAtTheDoor]

What aspect of a fancy bus that drives in normal traffic like any other bus (or car, assuming there are not bus-only lanes) makes it any more capable of getting a person to their destination sooner?

Addendum: this is a private company that technically speaking does not have to adhere to any schedule and isn't liable for various things (according to the TOS posted in this tree), so if anything you're more likely to be on the wrong end of things compared to an organized public transit system.

[cryptoz]

Not sure about SF, but in Toronto, the only problem is scheduling and management. Also, I won't vouch for Leap or make any assumptions about SF's transit, but if it's anything like Toronto, the only thing you need to change is scheduling. Traffic is not a problem. ONLY SCHEDULING.

The problems in Toronto result in 30-60 minute waits for a bus or a streetcar in the wintertime (during -20°C weather too). Then you will get about 5-10 in a row, all within a few seconds or minutes of each other.

This happens because Toronto does not schedule its transit very well (or at all). So everything is late and miserable.

If Leap schedules things correctly, in part because they are a private company and have incentive to do so, they may be able to beat public transit solutions - in terms of reliability of service - without breaking a sweat.

Again, I don't know how much this info is relevant here or for SF. But there are multiple ways that a private company can improve on the timing and scheduling of existing public transit.

[jfb]

I live in Toronto, and the problem is certainly one of traffic density, exacerbated by the heavy use of streetcars on Queen/King &c and the brain-dead payment model. The TTC doesn't schedule buses and streetcars to stack up -- it happens because of traffic holdups. That's not to say that they couldn't schedule better, of course; I think that dynamic scheduling, where buses can for instance skip stops if there's another following within 90sec or some other heuristic to catch up further on the route.

[alanctgardner3]

> If Leap schedules things correctly, in part because they are a private company and have incentive to do so

I don't know what you think the TTC does all day, but it's not sit around and say "if only we had competition, we'd make the busses better". It may not be possible to schedule to avoid busses bunching up during peak times, if that's how traffic behaves. The only way to fix it might be to run an excess of under-utilized busses, which cuts into profit margins. Which is something a private company with higher rates might be able to do, but the TTC is limited because service has to be accessible to everyone.

The risk of a private company like this showing up is that it'll decide to focus intensively on the 20% of routes that yield 80% of profit. This bleeds the public transit service of funds needed to run less profitable services at off times that are used by people without 9-5 jobs, or people in less privileged areas. So the rich get better bus service, and no longer subsidize the service for the poor.

[lclarkmichalek]

Are you sure that's scheduling and not just the natural grouping up of buses over time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching

[carapace]

I've lived in SF and Seattle. In SF, in the old days, you got lots of bunching, and usually on particular lines (like the 6 Parnassus which ran in herds), but these days there is very little of that at all. Might have something to do with computerizing the schedules awhile back, I don't know.

In Seattle the buses have posted times on a schedule at each stop and they pretty much nail it in my experience. If a bus is more than about three minutes late people start looking around and checking their watches.

[krschultz]

You are assuming that there is no better way to define the schedules, no better way to communicate bus location, and no better way to start buses on time than what currently exists.

There are two sides to on schedule performance - what the bus does, and what the schedule says. You are probably right that the bus can't move any faster just because it is private. On the other hand, I bet a tech savvy company can do vastly better at predicting what the actual bus schedule will be as well as communicating any deviations from the schedule in real time.

[creshal]

> On the other hand, I bet a tech savvy company can do vastly better at predicting what the actual bus schedule will be

It's mainly traffic issues, or a single wheelchair/baby carriage clogging up the exits and requiring more time than anticipated. It's hard to make useful predictions for that.

> as well as communicating any deviations from the schedule in real time.

The municipal public transits in many European cities already have real-time schedule updates (and replacements) delivered via smart phone apps and digital signage posts at the bus stops. Big IT (I think Siemens, e.g.) has been offering and deploying solutions for this for years now.

[gtaylor]

They specifically mention that they'll eventually intelligently figure out where they need to stop based on who signs up for a ride on the smartphone app. That seems like a pretty big potential win, in that they could do all sorts of creative things to minimize or control stops on the way.

It's worth a shot. I like seeing experiments like this that public transit can't do, even if it ultimately ends up failing.

[danielweber]

The fact that I, in theory, can complain as a voter and maybe change things is much less valuable than the ability to choose another provider.

I simply don't have time to fight with professional bureaucrats when something sucks, and the professional bureaucrats know it.

[pbreit]

It's liable to customer preference, one thing the public busses are not.