[nwp90]

When I lived in London, and used buses fairly regularly, I started thinking about ways to improve the service and stop bunching. I considered the reason stated here, and some of the solutions, but later realised that the root cause was that the drivers liked to stop and chat and perhaps play cards with each other at the (presumably unsupervised) "bus station" at the far end of the route. Once I'd observed 3 of them waiting for each other, chatting, and then all leaving at once on the same route, my interest in trying to think of ways to fix the problem waned.

[brc]

I lived in London and used to ride the 9, which at the time was one of the last routemaster buses.

I also learned that the drivers are comfortable in their chair, and they get paid whether they are late or early, whether they take off smoothly or like a jackrabbit, and whether people are crammed in or left waiting on here stop because they weren't quick enough.

In other words, automation has to be a part of any solution, because the drivers do not care.

[nwp90]

I'm sure there are several valuable lessons hidden away in there - concerning assumptions, human factors, jumping to "obvious" solutions without having verified the actual cause of a problem, unintended consequences etc. etc.

Would be interesting to look at a system where it does actually work well and see what's different.

[eru]

You could give them smartphones to make them less social.