One of the many disadvantages of bus transit and a dead giveaway for whenever anyone argues in bad faith that a rail project which being suggested by a competent transport planning authority could be done "just as well but more cheaply by bus"
In the Netherlands, the amount of signal priority is actually based on their delay. The first of a bus bunched, being delayed, will have more priority while the second bus will not get any priority. Also a good way to de-bunch busses, I think.
Besides that, busses in the NL have a system telling the driver is being behind, on time or delayed. Look at the little screen they have in front of them. GReen is on time, red is delayed and as far I know, it also can be yellow/orange. But it can also be red when they are to early! I've been in busses, just waiting a minute or two at a stop, before continueing the ride.
@@JaapGinder this is common in every country (at least in Europe). Even in rural Slovakia, on buses that go to villages with population of 100, in the middle of the mountains.
bus drivers also tend to wait at a stop if they notice they are earlier than they should be. might seem strange for a bus to just wait 5 minutes at a stop before continuing their route, but if they would arrive before their scheduled time people could miss the bus because the bus should have been at their stop yet. and if a bus is really behind schedule they sometimes skip stops that are serviced by several (bus) lines, so the bus has the opportunity to get back on schedule and those people could still take one of the other busses. this "bus stop skipping" is only really done at places where several lines converge, like at train stations. and if a bus is late they can request other busses to wait for a couple of minutes so people on the late bus can still make their transfer to those other lines.
In London, when they started tracking all the busses by GPS, busses bunched up behind started waiting for a few minutes to even out the service. They'd play an automated PA, that went something like "this bus will wait here for a few minutes to even out the service". Unfortunately this led to a fairly extreme reactions by frustrated passengers, such as shouting at drivers, even some abuse. No excuse for that of course, but they had to stop doing it! I think the practice now is for the bus affected will be told to deliberately drive slowly. The announcement is still used very occasionally but they're quite rare now.
If you're slowing down / keeping a bus to wait, does this mean the driver will have to turn early later on, lose the layover completely at the terminus or run not in service to catch up where they should be? There are legal driving hour restrictions that must be met.
Absolutely right. In my area, there are two bus routes that just follow the main road between two major shopping centres then to different suburbs past there. They schedule each of these for every 30 minutes but they come together rather than spread out in between. Essentially two buses every 30 minutes rather than one every 15.
@@justinsimmonds5674 I used to see this all the time in San Diego from wheelchair users, or other riders with limited mobility issues. breaking the gap back apart is the most difficult part, until low-floor or level boarding can be established.
There have been times where I've wondered if the drivers are doing that because they feel there is safety in numbers so they don't end up getting jumped by gang members in the more dangerous parts of town.
@@justinsimmonds5674 Sounds like my city`s bus service. Runs every 35 minutes day time and an hour and 10 minutes evenings. Whats worse is some routes only run one bus making it extremely inconvenient especially in the evening when if you just miss the earlier bus you have over an hour wait for the nect one. I have actually ended up walking for 45 minutes several times since it`s faster than waiting for the next bus.
@@kirikanoir2403 Wow… just wow… The bus route that passes out the back of my house runs hourly. Oftentimes faster to catch one of the other routes and contend with a steep hill. I calculated the slope on this hill as roughly 1 metre elevation change for every 10 metres of walking. This accounts for about 250 metres out of an 800 metre walk.
I used to take a specific bus route in Toronto every day, and EVERY DAY leaving work, rather than the maximum wait time of 15 minutes it should have been, I would wait between 30 min and 1 hr before three or four buses would show up. It was the most consistent and frustrating thing in my life at the time. I sent complaints every month or so, but it never changed. It was only so frustrating because I KNEW there must be a solution to make it at least a little better, but I’m sure the operators simply did not care to solve the problem. I started fantasizing about stealing a radio and directing the drivers myself based on the real-time arrivals GPS system they use/Nextbus app.
If I’m in a hurry I get infuriated when the bus sits at an empty stop for no apparent reason. However I think the reason is probably that they are countering bunching. Great video thank you!
In a reasonable transit system, a bus would only sit at a stop if it were early. Where I live buses usually only stop if they are more than two minutes early or the bus driver has to do something very important on the phone. Oh, we also have that bus driver who randomly stops sometimes to take pictures of the sunset.
I hate it when the bus waits for someone who isn't at the stop yet and that person doesn't even make an effort to get there quickly. Even worse is when that idiot holds up the bus by asking the driver for directions. Usually it is some homeless bum who wants to find Walmart but doesn't know where it is.
Another potential good idea is to let the rear emptier bus overtake the delayed bus and also have both buses exchange their schedules so the emptier bus can play catchup eaiser while the fuller bus can have some capacity to play with
This actually happened in my city when two buses were too close the one in the front skip a stop leaving passengers to the bus in the back, and then in the next stop the bus in the front stops so the other can skip that stop.
Many of our buses are trolley buses and that's just not possible. I once was on a bus with a brand-new driver and he didn't switch for a turn and the amount of detour we had to take to get back on the right set of cables!
@@EricaGamet solution: ahead tbus and benhind tbus both stop at bus stop. Ahead tbus skips 2-5 stops while behind tbus makes all stops. Ahead tbus gains capacity to catch up and behind tbus gets fuller and the bunching is cleared. (Ofc this would req radio comms to arrange)
On the minus side, on can argue, if you sit on the already delayed bus, from your perspective it would become even more delayed. On paper it would be on time, but you have taken this bus and not the next one for a reason. I would want my bus to at least *try* to arrive at the time it is supposed to be and not change it's shedule in the middle of the ride.
The problem becomes even more complex when it happens with buses from different routes. Like, not a bus for 5 mins straight, then 5 buses from different routes show up at once at the stop simply doesn't fit them. It is even more frustrating, when the buses have gps tracking, and the authorities aren't doing anything about it...
I've seen plenty of memes that say "when you've waited 30 minutes for your bus but there's so many buses in the way that he skips your stop". Really common in Latin America.
It's worth noting that a situation like that could involve buses dispatched from multiple depots. One thing that can be done is having separate bus stops for specific routes.
@@sonicboy678 usually in London, different bus routes in the same direction will share a bus stop. But where they are shortly about to branch off in different directions, there will usually be separate stops, depending on the road layout, frequency of service, etc.
@@christopherwaller2798 In Paris, a stop cannot be shared by more than 3 lines at a time. on the busiest routes, a stop can only serve 2 lines. It leads to the multiplication of stops and a pain to search which stop is your line though :D
Bunching is a common occurrence on the corridors of the jitneys in Hudson County, NJ because there is no preset timetable. NJ Transit is put at a disadvantage because not only do these jitneys show up way more often than NJ Transit buses do, but the jitney drivers all speak Spanish. They appeal to Latinos. A high percentage of Hudson County is Latino, and by being Latino-owned and operated, they take advantage of this. Frequency is their key to success, so even though they charge more than NJT, people still take them because they show up first. They also have the advantage of stopping at every single corner. They operate between George Washington Bridge, Journal Square, and Newport Centre mall, and some go to the PABT as well. Similar situation in Flatbush, Brooklyn. But a difference is there, the jitneys are operated by and served for West Indians. When the MTA discontinues bus routes in Brooklyn and Queens, these vans take over. During periods when even limited public mass transit is unavailable, such as the January 2005 Green Bus Lines and Command Bus Company strike or the December 2005 New York City transit strike, these vans were crucial.
As a note with London busses if bunching occurs usually the bus is told to wait at the stop to even out the service, this is usually is accompanied by announcement saying what is happening.
MBTA loooves having duplicate (or semi-duplicate) routes especially outside of downtown. Usually theyll have 30-45 minute headways and it's always hilarious having BOTH buses one after the next
Exactly, transit priority signals are extremely important, just having transit priority signals can go a long way! Transit is a service to the people, and of course they're longer than cars and carry way more people than a car so it must have priority to get everyone inside where they need to go in a timely manner instead of contributing to congestion on the roads. When there's transit priority signals, bus lanes, or even a dedicated bus highway like in Pittsburgh, these are the things that make a city's transit network so much better. In Pittsburgh's case, the South Busway opened in 1977 along the Route 51 corridor to allow buses to skip the crowded and light-filled Route 51! And it provides connections to the city's light-rail. Another example of a bus highway is the Adelaide O-Bahn guided busway. Built to serve Adelaide's suburbs, its unique feature of a non-transfer service direct from suburban streets to the city center made it attractive. Adelaide's track is 12 km/7.5 mi long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. Interchanges allow buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Not to mention, the O-Bahn has sump buster devices to prevent cars.
Love that you're taking this on, Reece. This is so much of what working transit planners in North America have to deal with on a daily basis, and try to explain to the public when we are, for example, proposing to remove stops. Also really looking forward to your headway management vid.
I used to study in Utrecht, where I took the infamous bus 12. The thing was a bi-articulated bus on a 2,5 minute schedule from the central station to campus and a major hospital nearby. That basically was a bunched line of busses throughout rushour. Just one bus after the other with the occasional bus from another line in between. They put a tramline in since then.
@@radoskan Pretty ignorant, the Baltic countries are really on a par with western European countries in terms of living standards at this point, but with housing / food etc costs still being a fair bit more reasonable. The ex-USSR stereotypes really don't apply.
In Hong Kong, bunching is very common which are typical bad, but there are certain routes that intentionally bunch because the number of people waiting is overwhelming that a single double-decker per minute is far too little to handle, but they are regulated that they cannot divert away from the original route to reach the destination quicker. Therefore, the solution is to have multiple buses bunch up on departure, so that everyone can get on the bus fairly easily. This is where the best long-term solution is to split routes but it's not so easy.
Hello, bus driver here. 👋 The type of vehicle is also important. Double decker buses have longer dwell times at bus stops because it takes longer for people to go up and down the stairs. An articulated bus would carry as many passengers but they would be able to board and alight faster. The other thing is how many doors there. Most buses in the UK are single door so this also slows things down as everyone has to enter and exit the vehicle through a single point. Ideally there should be two or more doors per vehicle but whilst the UK bus system is geared more towards a revenue seeking model rather than a public service model, we're likely to stay with single door buses.
I love the NYC Subway solution to this: if downtown 6 trains are delayed, and the train in front could delay the train behind, they make an announcement that the next stop is bleeker st and then brooklyn bridge. This skips Astor place, Spring st, and Canal St, so a bunch of people get off. But when you do hear the announcement it doesnt take much thinking to realise that another 6 train is probably just behind it.
I know we're not supposed to point this out, but the biggest initiator of bunching, particularly on any network with high-step boarding, is wheelchair loading. I remember San Diego Transit used to have high-floor buses, and loading or unloading a single wheelchair could take 5-7 minutes. On 15 minute headways, that one rider could eat the entire spacing just by getting on and off the bus. Near as I can tell, low-floor buses and level boarding is a hugely essential part of the solution, far more than station number or spacing.
Toronto is very focused on complaining about the regular driving experience while fully depending on long from built new transit without bothering to do much to improve what we have. It's ridiculous that we don't have transit priority signals configured for every major surface transit route.
This would be a great problem to have in my town where buses only come every 30 minutes. If they're early and you miss it, that's a 30 minute wait, which means you'll likely be very late for whatever you needed to get to. Waiting for 10 minutes and having 2 buses show up would still be a better experience than what we have. XD
In Dresden it is common that the empty bus overtakes the full bus so it can clear the upcoming stops. And in my experience bunching is a sign for an overwhelmed transit form, so another solution could be to switch from bus service in that certain route to tram or from tram to stadtbahn/metro.
Hey Reece! Longtime viewer (since you had around 20k subs I think?) and I’ve just gotta say, the production quality of your videos lately has been fantastic! The graphics in particular have really been stepped up since I first started watching (did you even have graphics back then?) and especially in the past few months - keep it up! You’re easily one of my favorite transit-oriented channels
A major factor in bunching is having to load disabled passengers via the lift, which can massively increase the amount of time needed at a stop, especially since the driver generally has to leave his/her seat to secure the wheelchair and then un-secure it when the person wants to get off again.
Another problem with bunching is that beacause people have been waiting for so long for a bus, they all get on the lead bus as soon as it arrives, so when the second bus gets to the station there's almost no people. Then most users will feel that the buses are overcrowded, even though the total capacity could have been enough for everyone to go comfortably.
One reason they all get on the first bus is the fear that, while you run along to the second bus, it will depart, and then the first one will leave while you are racing back to that! This is worse in places like rural UK, where two- or three-door buses are unheard of.
Live bus times on stops can help with that. Sometimes I'll see an absolutely rammed bus, notice that there's one only a few minutes behind, and decide to wait for that.
The best solution for this is on very busy routes ,create an new express route so that people can reach downtown faster or build a subway line along the route (ofc the subway stations is not every bus stops )
Ticketing here wasn't an issue for me since the only thing a passenger had to do was to tap it's smart card into the reader and it was ready to go in the blue corridor(Lima). The real cause of bunching when i tried to return home was bad infrastructure. You see, in the line covered by the blue corridor there are 2 bypasses and none of them were intended to put public transit as a priority. moreover, it is a place where you can often find vehicles in a gridlock. The result that you will have is 5 up to six buses from different routes bunched up.
In Turin in the 80's ATM (now GTT) developed a management system to keep the service more regular and to know what happens on the vehicles. In the 2000's this was updated and now every driver knows if they are on schedule and distance from the previous and the following veicle and obviously communicate with the management center.
As a bus driver with several years of experience driving high frequency routes through busy neighborhoods, what my colleagues and I would do is play leapfrog. I regularly pushed the bleeding edge of my schedule, leaving runners for the next bus. As a result, I regularly caught up with my leader, and I would pass them whenever nobody onboard pulled the stop request and speed onto the next stop, picking up all my leader's passengers and allowing them to become a de-facto drop-off only bus. That would allow them to make up time and pass me again. Leapfrogging minimized my leader's subsequent delay, and relieved them of some of their work. Back at the garage, there was a group of drivers not well liked because they wouldn't play leapfrog and just let their leaders do all the work.
Hmm, so if you basically bunch two buses up on purpose to finish the route faster. As a passenger, I would rather have the leader skip stops, so two that the buses can unbunch, even if it lowers the total travel time.
Happens quite often in the Lisboa metro area. Cadencies are schedule quite wide and during rush hour it gets even worse since bus lanes are non existent. A lot of people opt to drive instead which as we all know makes traffic even worse.
I have NEVER seen buses in Charlotte be bunched up like that... granted I also never see them on time in the first place, but that's a different story 😅 Oh, I see the problem. Almost no one uses Charlotte's buses so they can't fall behind with passengers... :(
Here in DK, there is a fine to the operator, if they drive too early. Buses are monitored live, and the fine (part of the contract) comes automatically. Right now it is 2000 kr ($ 294).
I love the video! I find a bus in Ottawa interesting because they purposely send 2 buses out at the same time sometimes, so the two buses can take turns picking people up and leapfrog each other at each stop, effectively halving the stops and saving me a lot of time. However, when the buses are doing pick up and drop off or mostly drop off both buses stop together pretty often, which isn't as great.
so a labour expensive way to NOT buy bendys and get the capacity of bendys have seen it done as a feed in for a overload relief bus at the start of "rush hour" or a factory let out second bus tails the first till the first is full and starts skipping stops and the second then takes over but this is used on a VERY unbalanced line where pickups are way higher then drop offs
You mentioned frequency, which exacerbates the risk of bunching. There's another parameter which is line length : the longer the line, the more delay (or advance) a vehicle is likely to get. So designing the network by avoiding needlessly long lines is also a measure to improve reliability, like transit priority (but cheaper).
I'm a bus driver usually the controllers are allowed tell drivers who are ahead of schedule to slow down but aren't allowed tell drivers who are behind schedule to speed up as that could be dangerous.
Most of these suggestions seem super do-able and practical, but fewer stops creates accessibility issues. If you're walking to the bus stop with a mobility aid or small children an additional 2 blocks can actually be pretty far. I rarely see elderly and disabled people, or parents with small children on busses outside of the downtown core, and I wonder if the distance between stops plays a role in this (of course there are several other reasons too, but it would be interesting to know if this is a factor).
😅Once i saw a bus being overtaken by the same busline, supposed to go every 20 min. They kept overtaking eachother for the rest of the line. This is extremely rare and was probably caused by a road incident earlier. The first bunching was kind of helped a little bit by the fact that the empty bus kept overtaking the delayed bus at bus stops.
On the nyc subway, when trains bunch up, and the lead train is overcrowded, they will run the lead train express to the next major station. Anyone that needed the skipped stops needs to cross the platform and backtrack. Obviously this can’t work on most transit systems, but it’s a rather effective way to spread the riders out.
I think the one situation where you might want multiple buses at a time is when there is a replacement service for a (less frequent) train (due to construction works), and they all leave after the train arrives and people switch over. (Though even then it might be useful to add another bus in-between the bunches.) Also, it's really noticable you were in Berlin recently - a lot of Berlin footage mixed in.
My bus route has buses every 4 to 8 minutes. I often get two or three coming together, but they leafrog down the road into Oxford, overtaking each other.
My regular route often involves mandatory stops to adhere to the timetable, often for several minutes when traffic is light. Even though I know that it means I will still reach my destination at the scheduled time I suppose it's just human to feel slightly frustrated by not moving.
From my experience, this is a solvable problem. Where I live, it seems the public transport department empirically collected the data and set the schedule accordingly. For example, the same bus reaches the destination faster or slower according to the timetable depending on the time of the day. But why is it slower? Because there's rush hour and the bus is stuck in traffic! There are still certain times when a bus might stop for a minute but those are quite rare and happen around the start/end of the rush hour, when the traffic situation is not as constant.
The timetable padding in London is more noticeable off peak and at night. During Covid lockdowns it was very noticeable as there was far less traffic and fewer bus passengers.
seen it at the ENDS of routes often at interchange stops say at a MALL or "bus row" also gives time for the operator to "take care of nature" and grab a snack stretch legs ETC
Growing up in India, which was 50 years ago, bunching happened frequently, the bus behind just overtook the bus in front without stopping at the same stop, provided no one was getting off at that stop and even out the service. There was and still is a bus driver and ticket conductor.
As rightly pointed out, a ton of things can cause bunching. In Chicago, I find a ton of time is spent boarding passengers on buses, as boarding/fare paying can only happen from the front. I understand the North American fear that boarding from all doors might lead to some people not fare dodging, but if it leads to the system operating more efficiently and reliably (which would increase ridership), that seems like a trade-off worth making.
The MTA here seems to allow lateness, but not running early, so drivers will sometimes stop and wait for the schedule to catch up. Plus if there’s bunching the lead bus will stop while the trailing bus will move to the next stop (if no one is getting off there). They’ll then continue to pass each other like this to try to stop overcrowding at stops, or on the bus itself. Of course if one bus is stuffed to the gills they won’t stop to pick up more passengers at all.
A man barely misses his bus. "You run three minutes early!", he complains to the driver. "No", the driver replies, "I'm actually seventeen minutes late.".
In Berlin these kind of busses are called Rudelbusse (Pack Busses). In the last five years it got worse. More and more lines are effected. Another phenomenon in Berlin are subway ghost trains. The Daisy System shows that the next train should come in 4 minutes. These 4 minutes run down (Sometime it takes 6 minutes to do so.) and it start to blink, like the train is coming now. It blinks for several minutes, than it disappear from the board and the next normal train shows up. I wonder what happened to all the trains. Wormholes?
4:40 Finally some footage from Tallinn, Estonia. Any chance of a dedicated video about Tallinn? If no, a video about the Rail Baltic project would be interesting.
I'm not sure about the rest of the world but particularly in Sydney, there are 2 types of bus drivers. 1) Schedule? What schedule? I thought this was a leisurely Sunday drive. 2) I'm on the last lap of this F1 race and I'm coming first no matter what
Last month, for the first time ever in Sydney, I was waiting for a bunched bus and the first one went on "set down only" and skipped our stops to catch up with timetable. Just 2 minutes later another came long. I thought this was great. I would rather have a bus go on set-down only now and then than removing stops.
If the stations showed the actual arrival time of the following buses perhaps seeing a bus bypass a station wouldn't be too painful. Keeping people informed is key.
My university’s transit system somehow manages to have this so badly😭 the route I take has 2 buses on it and it takes 30 minutes (with light traffic) to complete the loop, so on a good day there’s 15 minute headways (no schedule, you kind of just have to hope). The issue is that SO OFTEN they get bunched up, so you can barely miss the two buses and at that point it’s quicker to just walk rather than wait the 30 min for a bus route that would’ve saved me 5-10 minutes
How common is the usage of timepoints? I don't travel much, so I'm only familiar with the transit system in my hometown of Calgary. Commenters complaining about seeing a bus waiting at a stop for no apparent reason confused me a little bit at first. Every bus route in Calgary has multiple timepoints. These are stops where there is a deliberate gap of a few minutes between scheduled arrival and departure times for the buses on that route. These will frequently be at bus loops, stops near LRT stations, or natural transfer points where the route intersects a different heavily used route. If a bus is running a little behind schedule, it cuts short the wait time at the next time point. If it's gotten ahead of schedule, it proceeds normally to the next timepoint, then waits there until the scheduled departure time. This 'wait to get back on schedule' ONLY happens at timepoints, so regular Calgary Transit users are not surprised or frustrated to see buses waiting at timepoints - it's expected. Clearly, a system that uses timepoints should produce less bunching than one that doesn't. Not that there use is guaranteed to eliminate bunching. I have seen it happen here. Not a lot, but on occasion. Timepoints always seemed to me a simple, sensible and relatively straightforward way to deal with (or at least attempt to) all the little things that can put a bus off schedule one way or the other. Such that, I always assumed their usage would be near universal. Until I read some of those comments here. The commenters in question do not seem familiar with timepoints, at least not as I understand their use. So how common is the use of timepoints for buses in urban transit systems around the world?
An excellent video. But the points made in a graphic at 4mins 15secs need to be stressed. In places (eg most of Britain) where drivers are still expected to sell tickets, there can be 'random delays' while the passenger struggles to find the fare (or even the right app!), and/or the driver struggles to find the correct ticket on their machine.
Any bus that accepts cash fares is subject to this kind of delay. There's always Grandma counting out nickels until she either puts in the correct fare or the driver waves her through due to concern with the growing lineup behind Grandma.
Absolutely. Perhaps a way forward on this, which would also make the most of the drivers an operator has (a scarce resourse at present in the UK), would be to let the driver just drive - after all, tram-drivers don't deal with ticketing! It would also make the bus faster - which would start a whole virtuous circle of more passengers, less cars, less congestion and, as you point out, would get rid of one contributory cause of bunching.
Here in Portland, OR, you'll occasionally see a bus from another line behind a bus on another line, because many of our routes share the same bus stops with eachother. It's always kinda funny to see that. But after we opened up our first Frequent Express line - buses that run every 12 minutes or less in a semi-BRT system - it's really not uncommon to see a normal bus following right behind the iconic green bus, which is even more hilarious.
I think I should praise my transit agency, I rarely expirenced this problem. Dresden has the changing rythms of traffic lights for the Tram to fasten things up, and a app to know when the next Tram / Bus appears.
Ah, the short turn, something I've experienced a couple times on our wonderful German railways... Do note that for regional trains at least (and where I live), most significant delays tend to be around three to eight minutes and bunching only happens at more exceptional instances like infra failures (how often did the points fail again? lol).
There was an old joke about the TTC that if they were to open a restaurant, you'd sit at your table, wait 30 minutes, and then 5 servers would arrive to take your order...
Ideas such as, to let bus drivers switch their signs to 'Express' sometimes. This way, they can skip some stops unless someone needs to get off, helping them catch up if they're late. Another idea is to make sure drivers really stick to the timetable, even waiting at stops if they're early. GPS tracking and automated driver notifications/alerts can help. It could also help to have special bus cordoned off bus stops and bus lanes, so buses don't get stuck in traffic. Installing buzzers for passengers to signal their stops can speed up the process, too. Designing buses with big doors and low floors makes it quicker for people to get on and off. Providing real-time updates on screens at bus stops or apps about bus schedules and locations can also help. And instead of having buses run every 10 minutes, it might be better to focus on sending more buses to busy areas during peak times. Using analytics to predict busy areas is possible. Finally, linking bus routes to other transit stations can make the whole system more efficient. As a commuter, I don't want to stand in a bus if an bus after couple of minutes will have plenty of seats. Also bus stops should have better seating and information. Also, vehicle must always give way to buses, point a camera to record offenders.
I consider there to be a far worst nightmare for transit users: The Short Turn. Especially at night in bad winter weather, being dumped short of your destination in an unfamiliar neighbourhood with no idea when the next vehicle is coming especially when you had timed your trip as precisely as you could in advance to get to where you need to on time and now are at risk of being late? Horrific. I had this happen on the 511 streetcar in Toronto the other night and was reminded of how unreliable this makes transit seem. I would love for you to do a video on short turns similar to this one. Does it even happen with other transit agencies?
we have this here with regional trains. They go into the city on one line and out on the other - but skipping the always chaotic Hamburg Hauptbahnhof saves about half an hour.
It's always fun when the short turn and full route buses are bunched and the short turn bus pulls over for you four stops before it ends and the full route bus drives away.
Happens a fair amount in London but they usually try to do it at somewhere you can interchange with other routes in the same direction. That said, I've been terminated short at random places like West Green (near Seven Sisters which is a more useful place, but still in the middle of residential side streets!)
IMHO a short turn bus doing it for anti bunching purposes like suggested is BAD enough to cause people to NOT USE transit next time and I would say is so bad bunching is a BETTER solution then tossing people off a bus so the bus can change routes leaving them standing outside in an area they are not familiar with OR comfortable in
Yeah, short turning should only be an absolute last resort solution. DB has been doing short turns on very delayed long distance trains for a couple of years (nicknamed Pofalla-Wende after the guy who came up with the idea) and while from an operation standpoint it kind of makes sense, as a passenger it’s about the worst thing I can imagine. Because it turns from „oh well we might have 2h delay, but at least it’s only two more stops“ to „where the hell am I and how do I get home“. Delays are already stressful and irritating, adding a sudden change in service and forcing people to change vehicles creates frustration on a level where it might make them choose another transit mode next time.
Thanks for that video! We have several bus stops in my neighbourhood that are now unused because of bunching. The service is every 7-10 minutes, but one can often wait 25 minutes. Then two buses arrive and skip the stop because they are late or full. Since the buses don't pass on schedule anymore, one can wait up to 35 minutes to get their bus. People have taken the habit of walking further away to take other, less frequent, buses that are on time. The same line is both under and over-utilised. There has been talk of a subway, then a REM extension to help with this, but with CDPQ getting out of the project, we are back to square one.
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Back when I was a bus commuter, pdx drivers on my high-frequency route would often roll past my stop in a vehicle heaving with passengers and make giant "GET THE NEXT ONE" gestures. The first time it happened I was annoyed but I figured it out soon enough. They'd also sometimes just switch to drop-off only and use the route display to communicate it, until things evened out again.
In my Tram line if we get bunching, we take a Tram out of Service at the end of the line at the Depo, wait for the time to arrive where its on its return journey then slip it back into traffic and its ontime again. Downside is that passengers waiting at the last few stops will have to wait 30min instead of 15 but thats just the way it is.
About ticketing causing delays (text at 4:17): Some intercity buses from Umea get delayed significantly by ticket and bagage handling at the university hospital bus terminal. It's so bad that they might accumulate a 10-minute delay en-route further north. There's also a particularly bad signalled intersection in Umea, where buses frequently get stuck. This particular traffic light is on a road section between the intercity coach station and the UH, a 2 km section with six signalled intersections, none of which are transit-prioritized.
In Warsaw, a city with A LOT of long, cross-city bus lines bunching can sometimes go to the extreme of 4 or even 5 buses arriving at stops together. But there are lines without bunching, and these are lines running on corridors with separate bus lanes.
In Detroit one culprit I've noted is school traffic, Between about 2:30 and 4:00 some routes get overwhelmed with high school students and there are no extra buses to accomodate them. But the worst offenders are the oversized trains that can spend over an hour blocking an east-west arterial road while they uncouple and recouple cars in yards that are not meant to accomodate trains of that size.
When I caught the 99 at an unpopular stop going to high-school sometimes I'd be skipped 3 or 4 times. Bus drivers need to coordinate their skips. They would all point behind them like the next guy wasn't going to just skip me too hahah
You said that this happens a lot more often to buses but in my experience, trains have this problem more often because if the train in front is just a couple minutes late, the next train has to wait because there is no way to pass it, only in big train stations via a platform change, whereas with buses here if one is too late, the other one just passes it.
10:05 the digital systems where I'm from are accurate up to 10 seconds and they change colour if you're late or too early and are usually well respected by the drivers, I've never heard a radio call of someone saying to slow down or speed up
Because Munich has only one cross city train tunnel, but a well-run system of trams, metro and busses, I rarely if ever see bunching in those modes, but relatively often in the S-Bahn core.
in bucharest, there is a huge problem with bunching due to traffic and also due to the drivers which leave together so that they can chit-chat at the other end, and also some drivers just leave from the end whenever they feel like it. it's pretty rare to see lines with every vehicle nicely distanced apart. thankfully, the situation has started to change, but not a ton.
Good stuff. Bunching is a huge issue in Copenhagen where I'm from. Especially on the trunk "A-bus" lines. Like on Line 1A for example it is not uncommon, especially northbound, to wait for 20-25 minutes and see 3-4 buses in a row, for a line that'd normally run every 7.5 minutes. And thats just one example. Though bunching sometimes occurs on the S-train as well since so many lines share a congested network core, it means malfunctions or errors can happen super easily. And of course my own mother who already doesn't like public transit was in the city last night. I had dropped her off at a park n ride station and when she was trying to get back home the trains for her line got bunched and the departure displays at the station didn't display that properly. So she already waited 17 minutes for her train then even more, and she was already distrustful of any and all information displayed since she could not count on it. Especially when even the platform staff said they just didnt know why it did this. She ultimately ended up taking another line after waiting 35 minutes. This was on top of her forgetting her phone so communication was a pain and she couldn't look up the journey planners live feed... which she wouldn't have done regardless because she is already so distrustful of transit and dislikes it so much. Sorry for the long rant.
In Hong Kong, the city I am from, bus bunching occasionally occurs but only on those routes with headways tighter than 10 minutes or so(tho some are special services)and isn't much of a deal as you can always take the MTR as an alternative. However, in Norwich, UK, where I currently study in, buses are basically the only form of public transport you can take to travel within the city, and they have pretty tight 7-minute headways. While this seems good, it means a minor delay can easily cause bunching to occur. Not mentioning most of the passengers never purchase a ticket in advance, leading to unnecessarily long dwell times just for a person to board and buy a ticket. And at peak hours, the buses have too little capacity to soak up the sudden increase of passengers(these buses only have a capacity of around 90, those in Hong Kong can pick up more than 120 passengers easily), leading to, yes, longer dwell times and delays. As a person who has grown up in a city that has excellent transit, the public transport in Norwich can be described as horrendously bad.
But bunching has one pretty big advantage. If you wait for a wee bit longer you get an empty bus/tram whatever. And as someone who got fed up with commuting in public transport because of them being too full, riding an empty line is a blessing. Especially if the bus 2 minutes previously was packed.
Bad as bunching is (and I encountered a conga line of six buses in Stoneybatter in Dublin yesterday evening), what's worse is the ghost bus: the scheduled bus that never arrives. This can be a consequence of bunching, but I've also seen it happen at times where traffic hasn't been bad enough to cause delays.
Hong Kong solves the problem with the public light buses by just abandoning any form of timetable. The bus waits at the terminus until the driver has enough fares, then sets off. Of course, this works best when the two terminii have the majority of boarding passengers, as the majority of the route the bus will be full and can't take on any extra passengers.
I love how at the start of the video, while Reece is asking "Have you ever...?" the video shows a bus from my home town, where yes, yes I have. Many times.
for neighborhood scale routes, close stations and very high frequency are necessary to keep buses competitive vs the much faster on demand e bike. removing stops and reducing frequency essentially transforms your neighborhood shuttle into an intercity coach - which is a different kind of bus.
A mitigation I don't think you mentioned would be to shorten routes - condense all your catch-up minutes into one layover at the terminus. This would have to go with better interchange facilities (which are needed in most places anyway) so that changing between two routes becomes a negligible inconvenience. Excellent video BTW - I' sure many of your viewers (myself included) welcome discussions like this of the everyday 'nuts-and-bolts' details of transit running - from both the passenger's and the operator's view.
don't know how many routes could be shortened and NOT impact service coverage OR force a lot of riders to make transfers in an area of no importance to them and bunching on well used lines would be LESS of a issue then forced transfers at some suburban strip mall parking lot doubling as a interchange depot
One thing you didn't mention is route length. Cities with super long bus routes tend to have much more of a bunching problem, as these long routes are more likely to be impacted by bunching.
When i started studying urban planning in the middle of copenhagen, it was my first experience with "big city" transit. I had never seen bunching before and was just so flabbergasted at 3 busses showing up at once, then being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes for a walk that could take 5 minutes on foot.
My worst nightmare is when a crazy person/people enters the train car I'm in. While I keep hearing there is more protection on the trains in my area, I never see it.
I used to take the second bus to school, only waiting a couple minutes for an empty bus, otherwise was a cramp and packed bus and missing both would be half an hour wait... pain...
On bus systems, bunching can also be worsened by parallel routes. While running several bus routes together on one corridor section can increase frequency on that section, it's hard to coordinate every route to pass through at an equal spacing.
I remember the bus system in Sweden being very good. Always on time. No issues. I'm not sure if it's technically ironic that I find the train system in Japan to be so good (or better), but the bus system in Japan to be so bad/flawed. Maybe it's just the part of Japan that I live in. The trains are great. The busses, uh, just walk... The bus system in Sweden made a very positive and lasting impression on me though. I guess that was almost 30 years ago...
In college, there was a loop service around the campus that ran every few minutes. There was one stop on the far side of campus with a timer. The driver would set the timer for 10 minutes (or something, forget the value) when they left, and if another bus reached that stop before the timer hit 0, they had to wait. Prevents bunching, but annoying if you're on that bus sitting at a stop for 10 minutes. The loop ran both clockwise and counter-clockwise though, so not many people were actually on the bus at that timed stop.
Thanks for exploring this issue, Reece. When it comes to buses, I sometimes feel that direct communication between drivers might help -- for example, the driver of bus #2 with its many empty seats could agree to leapfrog the jam-packed bus #1 to clear out the upcoming stops along the line.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area and there was a route in San Francisco the #15 that would often bunch up and the drivers would do what we referred to as leapfrogging the lead vehicle would stop at the stop, and if the trailing vehicles did not have a request for people to get off they would drive on by and now the vehicle that was in the second position now becomes the vehicle in the first position and stops at the next stop to pick up passengers, and if they have anybody getting off they'll get off. In this way, the buses would actually move pretty quickly as a pack, but still annoying when you're standing there for 20 minutes and then four buses show up in a row. To your point, this route has been replaced by a tram.
One of our bus routes starts in a local shopping town. The garage the bus comes out of is also in the town. Despite the fact that when shopping, I usually get on the bus at the 2nd stop on the route. That route still suffers bunching which, I suspect, is caused by the buses being late on their incoming journey. Occasionally , we get an announcement that a bus is being held at a stop for a minutes to "re-sychronise the service", or "re-balance the service". I suspect this is to reduce bunching. Also, sometimes, the bus terminates early. My local train line does't really seem suffer bunching, unless something has gone wrong, because the railway company cancel trains (or even close the line) at the first sign of trouble.
🆗, I’m gonna have to say this, because it’s SOOO annoying to ALWAYS hear this wrong. It’s: FEWER passengers, FEWER buses, FEWER stops. All of these are COUNTABLE.
Bunching used to be endemic on the TTC a decade or so ago. Wait 25 minutes, only for 2 buses to show up within seconds of each other. I remember taking the same bus that arrives with less people regularly. It's still a problem but more frequent service and express buses have alleviated the issue somewhat.
I've seen buses on the same number do a "leapfrog" where the bus behind overtakes the bus in front and picks up passengers at the next stop, and then the bus that's behind which was previously in front overtakes it again and so on.
Sometimes I've seen buses leapfrog others in the bunch. A while back I read something about drivers being actively told how far ahead the next bus, and instructed to keep back. There's also having schedule leeway in the turnaround point, though that works better with lower frequnecies and also shorter routes.
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Regular reminder that all new videos in 2024 have English-language captions!
Woo
Let's gooo!!
Did they used to have other-language captions? Har har!
You changed your logo 🙂
Awesome work, thank you for this
Waiting 20 minutes for an "every 10 minutes" bus and then three buses showing up is an experience everyone who has ever used transit has had.
Thats why no matter what anything under 20min is Magically. Mystriously way to earlly.. Cause you given up on it lolz
One of the many disadvantages of bus transit and a dead giveaway for whenever anyone argues in bad faith that a rail project which being suggested by a competent transport planning authority could be done "just as well but more cheaply by bus"
@@BigBlueMan118 so they make Bunches of Bus act like Train???? Lordy
@@haisheauspforte1632 location... America ist nicht good ja
Oooooo
In the Netherlands, the amount of signal priority is actually based on their delay. The first of a bus bunched, being delayed, will have more priority while the second bus will not get any priority. Also a good way to de-bunch busses, I think.
Besides that, busses in the NL have a system telling the driver is being behind, on time or delayed. Look at the little screen they have in front of them. GReen is on time, red is delayed and as far I know, it also can be yellow/orange. But it can also be red when they are to early! I've been in busses, just waiting a minute or two at a stop, before continueing the ride.
@JaapGinder nice
I know Alstom has an ATP system for trams. Does the Netherlands have anything like that for their busses or trams?
@@JaapGinder this is common in every country (at least in Europe). Even in rural Slovakia, on buses that go to villages with population of 100, in the middle of the mountains.
bus drivers also tend to wait at a stop if they notice they are earlier than they should be.
might seem strange for a bus to just wait 5 minutes at a stop before continuing their route, but if they would arrive before their scheduled time people could miss the bus because the bus should have been at their stop yet.
and if a bus is really behind schedule they sometimes skip stops that are serviced by several (bus) lines, so the bus has the opportunity to get back on schedule and those people could still take one of the other busses. this "bus stop skipping" is only really done at places where several lines converge, like at train stations.
and if a bus is late they can request other busses to wait for a couple of minutes so people on the late bus can still make their transfer to those other lines.
In London, when they started tracking all the busses by GPS, busses bunched up behind started waiting for a few minutes to even out the service. They'd play an automated PA, that went something like "this bus will wait here for a few minutes to even out the service". Unfortunately this led to a fairly extreme reactions by frustrated passengers, such as shouting at drivers, even some abuse. No excuse for that of course, but they had to stop doing it! I think the practice now is for the bus affected will be told to deliberately drive slowly. The announcement is still used very occasionally but they're quite rare now.
I’ve heard that announcement recently, although not as much as before.
Montreal has had GPS tracking for about 5 years, but the recorded announcements that you mentioned for London only started a few months ago here.
@@TheScrollLock1I've lived in London all my life, and it's happened for years if I remember correctly
If you're slowing down / keeping a bus to wait, does this mean the driver will have to turn early later on, lose the layover completely at the terminus or run not in service to catch up where they should be? There are legal driving hour restrictions that must be met.
Sometimes the deliberate slow driving is anoying, because you miss your connection because of it
It's one thing if a route running every 5-10 minutes run back to back. It's another thing when this happens to a route running once every 30 minutes.
Absolutely right. In my area, there are two bus routes that just follow the main road between two major shopping centres then to different suburbs past there. They schedule each of these for every 30 minutes but they come together rather than spread out in between. Essentially two buses every 30 minutes rather than one every 15.
@@justinsimmonds5674 I used to see this all the time in San Diego from wheelchair users, or other riders with limited mobility issues. breaking the gap back apart is the most difficult part, until low-floor or level boarding can be established.
There have been times where I've wondered if the drivers are doing that because they feel there is safety in numbers so they don't end up getting jumped by gang members in the more dangerous parts of town.
@@justinsimmonds5674 Sounds like my city`s bus service. Runs every 35 minutes day time and an hour and 10 minutes evenings. Whats worse is some routes only run one bus making it extremely inconvenient especially in the evening when if you just miss the earlier bus you have over an hour wait for the nect one. I have actually ended up walking for 45 minutes several times since it`s faster than waiting for the next bus.
@@kirikanoir2403 Wow… just wow… The bus route that passes out the back of my house runs hourly. Oftentimes faster to catch one of the other routes and contend with a steep hill. I calculated the slope on this hill as roughly 1 metre elevation change for every 10 metres of walking. This accounts for about 250 metres out of an 800 metre walk.
I used to take a specific bus route in Toronto every day, and EVERY DAY leaving work, rather than the maximum wait time of 15 minutes it should have been, I would wait between 30 min and 1 hr before three or four buses would show up. It was the most consistent and frustrating thing in my life at the time. I sent complaints every month or so, but it never changed. It was only so frustrating because I KNEW there must be a solution to make it at least a little better, but I’m sure the operators simply did not care to solve the problem. I started fantasizing about stealing a radio and directing the drivers myself based on the real-time arrivals GPS system they use/Nextbus app.
That sucks, my recommendation for a situation like this is calling your city councillor and emailing them as well as the TTC. And doing so regularly!
Toronto and Montreal public transports are national embarrassments.
If I’m in a hurry I get infuriated when the bus sits at an empty stop for no apparent reason. However I think the reason is probably that they are countering bunching. Great video thank you!
Or just keeping to the schedule
It is indeed annoying if you want to catch a train, but most often the bus is just too early indeed.
The only time the buses in my area do that is if they realise they’re ahead of schedule.
In a reasonable transit system, a bus would only sit at a stop if it were early. Where I live buses usually only stop if they are more than two minutes early or the bus driver has to do something very important on the phone. Oh, we also have that bus driver who randomly stops sometimes to take pictures of the sunset.
I hate it when the bus waits for someone who isn't at the stop yet and that person doesn't even make an effort to get there quickly. Even worse is when that idiot holds up the bus by asking the driver for directions. Usually it is some homeless bum who wants to find Walmart but doesn't know where it is.
Another potential good idea is to let the rear emptier bus overtake the delayed bus and also have both buses exchange their schedules so the emptier bus can play catchup eaiser while the fuller bus can have some capacity to play with
This actually happened in my city when two buses were too close the one in the front skip a stop leaving passengers to the bus in the back, and then in the next stop the bus in the front stops so the other can skip that stop.
I think that is allowed in principle in may cities, but there aren't a lot of opportunities for one bus to overtake another on many busy streets.
Many of our buses are trolley buses and that's just not possible. I once was on a bus with a brand-new driver and he didn't switch for a turn and the amount of detour we had to take to get back on the right set of cables!
@@EricaGamet solution: ahead tbus and benhind tbus both stop at bus stop. Ahead tbus skips 2-5 stops while behind tbus makes all stops. Ahead tbus gains capacity to catch up and behind tbus gets fuller and the bunching is cleared. (Ofc this would req radio comms to arrange)
On the minus side, on can argue, if you sit on the already delayed bus, from your perspective it would become even more delayed. On paper it would be on time, but you have taken this bus and not the next one for a reason. I would want my bus to at least *try* to arrive at the time it is supposed to be and not change it's shedule in the middle of the ride.
The problem becomes even more complex when it happens with buses from different routes. Like, not a bus for 5 mins straight, then 5 buses from different routes show up at once at the stop simply doesn't fit them. It is even more frustrating, when the buses have gps tracking, and the authorities aren't doing anything about it...
I've seen plenty of memes that say "when you've waited 30 minutes for your bus but there's so many buses in the way that he skips your stop". Really common in Latin America.
It's worth noting that a situation like that could involve buses dispatched from multiple depots.
One thing that can be done is having separate bus stops for specific routes.
@@sonicboy678 usually in London, different bus routes in the same direction will share a bus stop. But where they are shortly about to branch off in different directions, there will usually be separate stops, depending on the road layout, frequency of service, etc.
@@christopherwaller2798 In Paris, a stop cannot be shared by more than 3 lines at a time. on the busiest routes, a stop can only serve 2 lines. It leads to the multiplication of stops and a pain to search which stop is your line though :D
"I think we're going to need a bigger bus stop"...
Bunching is a common occurrence on the corridors of the jitneys in Hudson County, NJ because there is no preset timetable. NJ Transit is put at a disadvantage because not only do these jitneys show up way more often than NJ Transit buses do, but the jitney drivers all speak Spanish. They appeal to Latinos. A high percentage of Hudson County is Latino, and by being Latino-owned and operated, they take advantage of this. Frequency is their key to success, so even though they charge more than NJT, people still take them because they show up first. They also have the advantage of stopping at every single corner. They operate between George Washington Bridge, Journal Square, and Newport Centre mall, and some go to the PABT as well.
Similar situation in Flatbush, Brooklyn. But a difference is there, the jitneys are operated by and served for West Indians. When the MTA discontinues bus routes in Brooklyn and Queens, these vans take over. During periods when even limited public mass transit is unavailable, such as the January 2005 Green Bus Lines and Command Bus Company strike or the December 2005 New York City transit strike, these vans were crucial.
As a note with London busses if bunching occurs usually the bus is told to wait at the stop to even out the service, this is usually is accompanied by announcement saying what is happening.
MBTA loooves having duplicate (or semi-duplicate) routes especially outside of downtown. Usually theyll have 30-45 minute headways and it's always hilarious having BOTH buses one after the next
Exactly, transit priority signals are extremely important, just having transit priority signals can go a long way! Transit is a service to the people, and of course they're longer than cars and carry way more people than a car so it must have priority to get everyone inside where they need to go in a timely manner instead of contributing to congestion on the roads. When there's transit priority signals, bus lanes, or even a dedicated bus highway like in Pittsburgh, these are the things that make a city's transit network so much better. In Pittsburgh's case, the South Busway opened in 1977 along the Route 51 corridor to allow buses to skip the crowded and light-filled Route 51! And it provides connections to the city's light-rail.
Another example of a bus highway is the Adelaide O-Bahn guided busway. Built to serve Adelaide's suburbs, its unique feature of a non-transfer service direct from suburban streets to the city center made it attractive. Adelaide's track is 12 km/7.5 mi long and includes three interchanges at Klemzig, Paradise and Tea Tree Plaza. Interchanges allow buses to enter and exit the busway and to continue on suburban routes, avoiding the need for passengers to transfer to another bus to continue their journey. Not to mention, the O-Bahn has sump buster devices to prevent cars.
Love that you're taking this on, Reece. This is so much of what working transit planners in North America have to deal with on a daily basis, and try to explain to the public when we are, for example, proposing to remove stops. Also really looking forward to your headway management vid.
Thanks, that's great to hear! It's not easy but it's important work!
I would love to live somewhere where the busses are frequent enough for bunching to be a problem.
Come to Estonia, we have free public transport for residents and zero bunching.
I used to study in Utrecht, where I took the infamous bus 12. The thing was a bi-articulated bus on a 2,5 minute schedule from the central station to campus and a major hospital nearby. That basically was a bunched line of busses throughout rushour. Just one bus after the other with the occasional bus from another line in between. They put a tramline in since then.
@@fromhigherground4272 Yeah and that's all you have 😂
@@radoskan Pretty ignorant, the Baltic countries are really on a par with western European countries in terms of living standards at this point, but with housing / food etc costs still being a fair bit more reasonable. The ex-USSR stereotypes really don't apply.
We all know mr bob..
In Hong Kong, bunching is very common which are typical bad, but there are certain routes that intentionally bunch because the number of people waiting is overwhelming that a single double-decker per minute is far too little to handle, but they are regulated that they cannot divert away from the original route to reach the destination quicker. Therefore, the solution is to have multiple buses bunch up on departure, so that everyone can get on the bus fairly easily. This is where the best long-term solution is to split routes but it's not so easy.
Hello, bus driver here. 👋
The type of vehicle is also important. Double decker buses have longer dwell times at bus stops because it takes longer for people to go up and down the stairs. An articulated bus would carry as many passengers but they would be able to board and alight faster.
The other thing is how many doors there. Most buses in the UK are single door so this also slows things down as everyone has to enter and exit the vehicle through a single point. Ideally there should be two or more doors per vehicle but whilst the UK bus system is geared more towards a revenue seeking model rather than a public service model, we're likely to stay with single door buses.
I love the NYC Subway solution to this: if downtown 6 trains are delayed, and the train in front could delay the train behind, they make an announcement that the next stop is bleeker st and then brooklyn bridge. This skips Astor place, Spring st, and Canal St, so a bunch of people get off. But when you do hear the announcement it doesnt take much thinking to realise that another 6 train is probably just behind it.
I know we're not supposed to point this out, but the biggest initiator of bunching, particularly on any network with high-step boarding, is wheelchair loading.
I remember San Diego Transit used to have high-floor buses, and loading or unloading a single wheelchair could take 5-7 minutes. On 15 minute headways, that one rider could eat the entire spacing just by getting on and off the bus.
Near as I can tell, low-floor buses and level boarding is a hugely essential part of the solution, far more than station number or spacing.
“The green wave”, which moves at the speed of public transit, is nice for bicycle riders as well, because they can also utilize it.
Potentially, though ideally PT is moving faster. This is why having separate bike routes from major roads is often seen as advantageous!
Toronto is very focused on complaining about the regular driving experience while fully depending on long from built new transit without bothering to do much to improve what we have. It's ridiculous that we don't have transit priority signals configured for every major surface transit route.
This would be a great problem to have in my town where buses only come every 30 minutes. If they're early and you miss it, that's a 30 minute wait, which means you'll likely be very late for whatever you needed to get to. Waiting for 10 minutes and having 2 buses show up would still be a better experience than what we have. XD
In Dresden it is common that the empty bus overtakes the full bus so it can clear the upcoming stops. And in my experience bunching is a sign for an overwhelmed transit form, so another solution could be to switch from bus service in that certain route to tram or from tram to stadtbahn/metro.
Hey Reece! Longtime viewer (since you had around 20k subs I think?) and I’ve just gotta say, the production quality of your videos lately has been fantastic! The graphics in particular have really been stepped up since I first started watching (did you even have graphics back then?) and especially in the past few months - keep it up! You’re easily one of my favorite transit-oriented channels
Thank you! I did not have a lot of graphics early on, have really been trying to do more and better especially this year with less videos!
A major factor in bunching is having to load disabled passengers via the lift, which can massively increase the amount of time needed at a stop, especially since the driver generally has to leave his/her seat to secure the wheelchair and then un-secure it when the person wants to get off again.
Another problem with bunching is that beacause people have been waiting for so long for a bus, they all get on the lead bus as soon as it arrives, so when the second bus gets to the station there's almost no people. Then most users will feel that the buses are overcrowded, even though the total capacity could have been enough for everyone to go comfortably.
One reason they all get on the first bus is the fear that, while you run along to the second bus, it will depart, and then the first one will leave while you are racing back to that! This is worse in places like rural UK, where two- or three-door buses are unheard of.
Live bus times on stops can help with that. Sometimes I'll see an absolutely rammed bus, notice that there's one only a few minutes behind, and decide to wait for that.
The best solution for this is on very busy routes ,create an new express route so that people can reach downtown faster or build a subway line along the route (ofc the subway stations is not every bus stops )
Ticketing here wasn't an issue for me since the only thing a passenger had to do was to tap it's smart card into the reader and it was ready to go in the blue corridor(Lima). The real cause of bunching when i tried to return home was bad infrastructure. You see, in the line covered by the blue corridor there are 2 bypasses and none of them were intended to put public transit as a priority. moreover, it is a place where you can often find vehicles in a gridlock. The result that you will have is 5 up to six buses from different routes bunched up.
In Turin in the 80's ATM (now GTT) developed a management system to keep the service more regular and to know what happens on the vehicles. In the 2000's this was updated and now every driver knows if they are on schedule and distance from the previous and the following veicle and obviously communicate with the management center.
As a bus driver with several years of experience driving high frequency routes through busy neighborhoods, what my colleagues and I would do is play leapfrog. I regularly pushed the bleeding edge of my schedule, leaving runners for the next bus. As a result, I regularly caught up with my leader, and I would pass them whenever nobody onboard pulled the stop request and speed onto the next stop, picking up all my leader's passengers and allowing them to become a de-facto drop-off only bus. That would allow them to make up time and pass me again. Leapfrogging minimized my leader's subsequent delay, and relieved them of some of their work. Back at the garage, there was a group of drivers not well liked because they wouldn't play leapfrog and just let their leaders do all the work.
Hmm, so if you basically bunch two buses up on purpose to finish the route faster.
As a passenger, I would rather have the leader skip stops, so two that the buses can unbunch, even if it lowers the total travel time.
Happens quite often in the Lisboa metro area. Cadencies are schedule quite wide and during rush hour it gets even worse since bus lanes are non existent. A lot of people opt to drive instead which as we all know makes traffic even worse.
I have NEVER seen buses in Charlotte be bunched up like that... granted I also never see them on time in the first place, but that's a different story 😅
Oh, I see the problem. Almost no one uses Charlotte's buses so they can't fall behind with passengers... :(
Here in DK, there is a fine to the operator, if they drive too early. Buses are monitored live, and the fine (part of the contract) comes automatically. Right now it is 2000 kr ($ 294).
I love the video! I find a bus in Ottawa interesting because they purposely send 2 buses out at the same time sometimes, so the two buses can take turns picking people up and leapfrog each other at each stop, effectively halving the stops and saving me a lot of time. However, when the buses are doing pick up and drop off or mostly drop off both buses stop together pretty often, which isn't as great.
so a labour expensive way to NOT buy bendys and get the capacity of bendys
have seen it done as a feed in for a overload relief bus at the start of "rush hour" or a factory let out second bus tails the first till the first is full and starts skipping stops and the second then takes over but this is used on a VERY unbalanced line where pickups are way higher then drop offs
You mentioned frequency, which exacerbates the risk of bunching. There's another parameter which is line length : the longer the line, the more delay (or advance) a vehicle is likely to get. So designing the network by avoiding needlessly long lines is also a measure to improve reliability, like transit priority (but cheaper).
I'm a bus driver usually the controllers are allowed tell drivers who are ahead of schedule to slow down but aren't allowed tell drivers who are behind schedule to speed up as that could be dangerous.
Most of these suggestions seem super do-able and practical, but fewer stops creates accessibility issues. If you're walking to the bus stop with a mobility aid or small children an additional 2 blocks can actually be pretty far. I rarely see elderly and disabled people, or parents with small children on busses outside of the downtown core, and I wonder if the distance between stops plays a role in this (of course there are several other reasons too, but it would be interesting to know if this is a factor).
😅Once i saw a bus being overtaken by the same busline, supposed to go every 20 min. They kept overtaking eachother for the rest of the line. This is extremely rare and was probably caused by a road incident earlier.
The first bunching was kind of helped a little bit by the fact that the empty bus kept overtaking the delayed bus at bus stops.
On the nyc subway, when trains bunch up, and the lead train is overcrowded, they will run the lead train express to the next major station. Anyone that needed the skipped stops needs to cross the platform and backtrack. Obviously this can’t work on most transit systems, but it’s a rather effective way to spread the riders out.
I think the one situation where you might want multiple buses at a time is when there is a replacement service for a (less frequent) train (due to construction works), and they all leave after the train arrives and people switch over. (Though even then it might be useful to add another bus in-between the bunches.)
Also, it's really noticable you were in Berlin recently - a lot of Berlin footage mixed in.
My bus route has buses every 4 to 8 minutes. I often get two or three coming together, but they leafrog down the road into Oxford, overtaking each other.
My regular route often involves mandatory stops to adhere to the timetable, often for several minutes when traffic is light. Even though I know that it means I will still reach my destination at the scheduled time I suppose it's just human to feel slightly frustrated by not moving.
Reminds me of timetable padding, another thing Reece has made a video on
From my experience, this is a solvable problem. Where I live, it seems the public transport department empirically collected the data and set the schedule accordingly. For example, the same bus reaches the destination faster or slower according to the timetable depending on the time of the day. But why is it slower? Because there's rush hour and the bus is stuck in traffic! There are still certain times when a bus might stop for a minute but those are quite rare and happen around the start/end of the rush hour, when the traffic situation is not as constant.
The timetable padding in London is more noticeable off peak and at night. During Covid lockdowns it was very noticeable as there was far less traffic and fewer bus passengers.
I hate it when they have this kind of delay shortly before the end of the route.
seen it at the ENDS of routes often at interchange stops say at a MALL or "bus row" also gives time for the operator to "take care of nature" and grab a snack stretch legs ETC
Growing up in India, which was 50 years ago, bunching happened frequently, the bus behind just overtook the bus in front without stopping at the same stop, provided no one was getting off at that stop and even out the service. There was and still is a bus driver and ticket conductor.
This is one of the best produced RMTransit videos I've ever seen.
As rightly pointed out, a ton of things can cause bunching. In Chicago, I find a ton of time is spent boarding passengers on buses, as boarding/fare paying can only happen from the front. I understand the North American fear that boarding from all doors might lead to some people not fare dodging, but if it leads to the system operating more efficiently and reliably (which would increase ridership), that seems like a trade-off worth making.
Your research always impresses me.
The MTA here seems to allow lateness, but not running early, so drivers will sometimes stop and wait for the schedule to catch up. Plus if there’s bunching the lead bus will stop while the trailing bus will move to the next stop (if no one is getting off there). They’ll then continue to pass each other like this to try to stop overcrowding at stops, or on the bus itself. Of course if one bus is stuffed to the gills they won’t stop to pick up more passengers at all.
Nothing is more annoying than getting to the bus stop on time; only to miss the bus because the cowboy driver decided to go early.
A man barely misses his bus. "You run three minutes early!", he complains to the driver. "No", the driver replies, "I'm actually seventeen minutes late.".
In Berlin these kind of busses are called Rudelbusse (Pack Busses). In the last five years it got worse. More and more lines are effected. Another phenomenon in Berlin are subway ghost trains. The Daisy System shows that the next train should come in 4 minutes. These 4 minutes run down (Sometime it takes 6 minutes to do so.) and it start to blink, like the train is coming now. It blinks for several minutes, than it disappear from the board and the next normal train shows up. I wonder what happened to all the trains. Wormholes?
4:40 Finally some footage from Tallinn, Estonia. Any chance of a dedicated video about Tallinn? If no, a video about the Rail Baltic project would be interesting.
I'm not sure about the rest of the world but particularly in Sydney, there are 2 types of bus drivers.
1) Schedule? What schedule? I thought this was a leisurely Sunday drive.
2) I'm on the last lap of this F1 race and I'm coming first no matter what
Last month, for the first time ever in Sydney, I was waiting for a bunched bus and the first one went on "set down only" and skipped our stops to catch up with timetable. Just 2 minutes later another came long. I thought this was great.
I would rather have a bus go on set-down only now and then than removing stops.
If the stations showed the actual arrival time of the following buses perhaps seeing a bus bypass a station wouldn't be too painful. Keeping people informed is key.
In many European cities the 'real time' displays at stop tell the more discerning passengers that there is 'another one behind'.
My university’s transit system somehow manages to have this so badly😭 the route I take has 2 buses on it and it takes 30 minutes (with light traffic) to complete the loop, so on a good day there’s 15 minute headways (no schedule, you kind of just have to hope). The issue is that SO OFTEN they get bunched up, so you can barely miss the two buses and at that point it’s quicker to just walk rather than wait the 30 min for a bus route that would’ve saved me 5-10 minutes
How common is the usage of timepoints? I don't travel much, so I'm only familiar with the transit system in my hometown of Calgary.
Commenters complaining about seeing a bus waiting at a stop for no apparent reason confused me a little bit at first.
Every bus route in Calgary has multiple timepoints. These are stops where there is a deliberate gap of a few minutes between scheduled arrival and departure times for the buses on that route. These will frequently be at bus loops, stops near LRT stations, or natural transfer points where the route intersects a different heavily used route.
If a bus is running a little behind schedule, it cuts short the wait time at the next time point. If it's gotten ahead of schedule, it proceeds normally to the next timepoint, then waits there until the scheduled departure time. This 'wait to get back on schedule' ONLY happens at timepoints, so regular Calgary Transit users are not surprised or frustrated to see buses waiting at timepoints - it's expected.
Clearly, a system that uses timepoints should produce less bunching than one that doesn't. Not that there use is guaranteed to eliminate bunching. I have seen it happen here. Not a lot, but on occasion.
Timepoints always seemed to me a simple, sensible and relatively straightforward way to deal with (or at least attempt to) all the little things that can put a bus off schedule one way or the other. Such that, I always assumed their usage would be near universal.
Until I read some of those comments here. The commenters in question do not seem familiar with timepoints, at least not as I understand their use.
So how common is the use of timepoints for buses in urban transit systems around the world?
An excellent video. But the points made in a graphic at 4mins 15secs need to be stressed. In places (eg most of Britain) where drivers are still expected to sell tickets, there can be 'random delays' while the passenger struggles to find the fare (or even the right app!), and/or the driver struggles to find the correct ticket on their machine.
Any bus that accepts cash fares is subject to this kind of delay. There's always Grandma counting out nickels until she either puts in the correct fare or the driver waves her through due to concern with the growing lineup behind Grandma.
Absolutely. Perhaps a way forward on this, which would also make the most of the drivers an operator has (a scarce resourse at present in the UK), would be to let the driver just drive - after all, tram-drivers don't deal with ticketing! It would also make the bus faster - which would start a whole virtuous circle of more passengers, less cars, less congestion and, as you point out, would get rid of one contributory cause of bunching.
When I was a kid I could only dream of watching content related to public transit, thank you for taking the time to make it happen!
Here in Portland, OR, you'll occasionally see a bus from another line behind a bus on another line, because many of our routes share the same bus stops with eachother. It's always kinda funny to see that. But after we opened up our first Frequent Express line - buses that run every 12 minutes or less in a semi-BRT system - it's really not uncommon to see a normal bus following right behind the iconic green bus, which is even more hilarious.
I think I should praise my transit agency, I rarely expirenced this problem. Dresden has the changing rythms of traffic lights for the Tram to fasten things up, and a app to know when the next Tram / Bus appears.
Ah, the short turn, something I've experienced a couple times on our wonderful German railways... Do note that for regional trains at least (and where I live), most significant delays tend to be around three to eight minutes and bunching only happens at more exceptional instances like infra failures (how often did the points fail again? lol).
There was an old joke about the TTC that if they were to open a restaurant, you'd sit at your table, wait 30 minutes, and then 5 servers would arrive to take your order...
Ideas such as, to let bus drivers switch their signs to 'Express' sometimes. This way, they can skip some stops unless someone needs to get off, helping them catch up if they're late. Another idea is to make sure drivers really stick to the timetable, even waiting at stops if they're early. GPS tracking and automated driver notifications/alerts can help. It could also help to have special bus cordoned off bus stops and bus lanes, so buses don't get stuck in traffic. Installing buzzers for passengers to signal their stops can speed up the process, too. Designing buses with big doors and low floors makes it quicker for people to get on and off. Providing real-time updates on screens at bus stops or apps about bus schedules and locations can also help. And instead of having buses run every 10 minutes, it might be better to focus on sending more buses to busy areas during peak times. Using analytics to predict busy areas is possible. Finally, linking bus routes to other transit stations can make the whole system more efficient. As a commuter, I don't want to stand in a bus if an bus after couple of minutes will have plenty of seats. Also bus stops should have better seating and information. Also, vehicle must always give way to buses, point a camera to record offenders.
The worst nightmare is missing a connection ... when said connecting was the last possible option for the day.
I consider there to be a far worst nightmare for transit users: The Short Turn. Especially at night in bad winter weather, being dumped short of your destination in an unfamiliar neighbourhood with no idea when the next vehicle is coming especially when you had timed your trip as precisely as you could in advance to get to where you need to on time and now are at risk of being late? Horrific. I had this happen on the 511 streetcar in Toronto the other night and was reminded of how unreliable this makes transit seem. I would love for you to do a video on short turns similar to this one. Does it even happen with other transit agencies?
we have this here with regional trains. They go into the city on one line and out on the other - but skipping the always chaotic Hamburg Hauptbahnhof saves about half an hour.
It's always fun when the short turn and full route buses are bunched and the short turn bus pulls over for you four stops before it ends and the full route bus drives away.
Happens a fair amount in London but they usually try to do it at somewhere you can interchange with other routes in the same direction. That said, I've been terminated short at random places like West Green (near Seven Sisters which is a more useful place, but still in the middle of residential side streets!)
IMHO a short turn bus doing it for anti bunching purposes like suggested is BAD enough to cause people to NOT USE transit next time and I would say is so bad bunching is a BETTER solution then tossing people off a bus so the bus can change routes leaving them standing outside in an area they are not familiar with OR comfortable in
Yeah, short turning should only be an absolute last resort solution. DB has been doing short turns on very delayed long distance trains for a couple of years (nicknamed Pofalla-Wende after the guy who came up with the idea) and while from an operation standpoint it kind of makes sense, as a passenger it’s about the worst thing I can imagine. Because it turns from „oh well we might have 2h delay, but at least it’s only two more stops“ to „where the hell am I and how do I get home“. Delays are already stressful and irritating, adding a sudden change in service and forcing people to change vehicles creates frustration on a level where it might make them choose another transit mode next time.
Thanks for that video!
We have several bus stops in my neighbourhood that are now unused because of bunching. The service is every 7-10 minutes, but one can often wait 25 minutes. Then two buses arrive and skip the stop because they are late or full. Since the buses don't pass on schedule anymore, one can wait up to 35 minutes to get their bus. People have taken the habit of walking further away to take other, less frequent, buses that are on time. The same line is both under and over-utilised.
There has been talk of a subway, then a REM extension to help with this, but with CDPQ getting out of the project, we are back to square one.
I really can't say which song Floor sings is my favorite, it always depends on my mood - but I can say one thing; when I often lack energy during the long polar night, this is the song I listen to the most (several times a day).
But no matter what Floor sings, she always gives me exactly what I need to feel good. That's what I call art
Back when I was a bus commuter, pdx drivers on my high-frequency route would often roll past my stop in a vehicle heaving with passengers and make giant "GET THE NEXT ONE" gestures. The first time it happened I was annoyed but I figured it out soon enough. They'd also sometimes just switch to drop-off only and use the route display to communicate it, until things evened out again.
Was this on Line 72?
In my Tram line if we get bunching, we take a Tram out of Service at the end of the line at the Depo, wait for the time to arrive where its on its return journey then slip it back into traffic and its ontime again. Downside is that passengers waiting at the last few stops will have to wait 30min instead of 15 but thats just the way it is.
About ticketing causing delays (text at 4:17): Some intercity buses from Umea get delayed significantly by ticket and bagage handling at the university hospital bus terminal. It's so bad that they might accumulate a 10-minute delay en-route further north. There's also a particularly bad signalled intersection in Umea, where buses frequently get stuck. This particular traffic light is on a road section between the intercity coach station and the UH, a 2 km section with six signalled intersections, none of which are transit-prioritized.
In Warsaw, a city with A LOT of long, cross-city bus lines bunching can sometimes go to the extreme of 4 or even 5 buses arriving at stops together. But there are lines without bunching, and these are lines running on corridors with separate bus lanes.
In Detroit one culprit I've noted is school traffic, Between about 2:30 and 4:00 some routes get overwhelmed with high school students and there are no extra buses to accomodate them. But the worst offenders are the oversized trains that can spend over an hour blocking an east-west arterial road while they uncouple and recouple cars in yards that are not meant to accomodate trains of that size.
When I caught the 99 at an unpopular stop going to high-school sometimes I'd be skipped 3 or 4 times. Bus drivers need to coordinate their skips. They would all point behind them like the next guy wasn't going to just skip me too hahah
You said that this happens a lot more often to buses but in my experience, trains have this problem more often because if the train in front is just a couple minutes late, the next train has to wait because there is no way to pass it, only in big train stations via a platform change, whereas with buses here if one is too late, the other one just passes it.
10:05 the digital systems where I'm from are accurate up to 10 seconds and they change colour if you're late or too early and are usually well respected by the drivers, I've never heard a radio call of someone saying to slow down or speed up
Because Munich has only one cross city train tunnel, but a well-run system of trams, metro and busses, I rarely if ever see bunching in those modes, but relatively often in the S-Bahn core.
in bucharest, there is a huge problem with bunching due to traffic and also due to the drivers which leave together so that they can chit-chat at the other end, and also some drivers just leave from the end whenever they feel like it. it's pretty rare to see lines with every vehicle nicely distanced apart. thankfully, the situation has started to change, but not a ton.
Thank you for making this video! I’ve been noticing this for years. Cities take notes!
Good stuff. Bunching is a huge issue in Copenhagen where I'm from. Especially on the trunk "A-bus" lines. Like on Line 1A for example it is not uncommon, especially northbound, to wait for 20-25 minutes and see 3-4 buses in a row, for a line that'd normally run every 7.5 minutes. And thats just one example. Though bunching sometimes occurs on the S-train as well since so many lines share a congested network core, it means malfunctions or errors can happen super easily. And of course my own mother who already doesn't like public transit was in the city last night. I had dropped her off at a park n ride station and when she was trying to get back home the trains for her line got bunched and the departure displays at the station didn't display that properly. So she already waited 17 minutes for her train then even more, and she was already distrustful of any and all information displayed since she could not count on it. Especially when even the platform staff said they just didnt know why it did this. She ultimately ended up taking another line after waiting 35 minutes. This was on top of her forgetting her phone so communication was a pain and she couldn't look up the journey planners live feed... which she wouldn't have done regardless because she is already so distrustful of transit and dislikes it so much.
Sorry for the long rant.
In Hong Kong, the city I am from, bus bunching occasionally occurs but only on those routes with headways tighter than 10 minutes or so(tho some are special services)and isn't much of a deal as you can always take the MTR as an alternative.
However, in Norwich, UK, where I currently study in, buses are basically the only form of public transport you can take to travel within the city, and they have pretty tight 7-minute headways. While this seems good, it means a minor delay can easily cause bunching to occur. Not mentioning most of the passengers never purchase a ticket in advance, leading to unnecessarily long dwell times just for a person to board and buy a ticket.
And at peak hours, the buses have too little capacity to soak up the sudden increase of passengers(these buses only have a capacity of around 90, those in Hong Kong can pick up more than 120 passengers easily), leading to, yes, longer dwell times and delays.
As a person who has grown up in a city that has excellent transit, the public transport in Norwich can be described as horrendously bad.
But bunching has one pretty big advantage. If you wait for a wee bit longer you get an empty bus/tram whatever. And as someone who got fed up with commuting in public transport because of them being too full, riding an empty line is a blessing. Especially if the bus 2 minutes previously was packed.
Bad as bunching is (and I encountered a conga line of six buses in Stoneybatter in Dublin yesterday evening), what's worse is the ghost bus: the scheduled bus that never arrives. This can be a consequence of bunching, but I've also seen it happen at times where traffic hasn't been bad enough to cause delays.
Hong Kong solves the problem with the public light buses by just abandoning any form of timetable. The bus waits at the terminus until the driver has enough fares, then sets off. Of course, this works best when the two terminii have the majority of boarding passengers, as the majority of the route the bus will be full and can't take on any extra passengers.
I love how at the start of the video, while Reece is asking "Have you ever...?" the video shows a bus from my home town, where yes, yes I have. Many times.
for neighborhood scale routes, close stations and very high frequency are necessary to keep buses competitive vs the much faster on demand e bike. removing stops and reducing frequency essentially transforms your neighborhood shuttle into an intercity coach - which is a different kind of bus.
A mitigation I don't think you mentioned would be to shorten routes - condense all your catch-up minutes into one layover at the terminus. This would have to go with better interchange facilities (which are needed in most places anyway) so that changing between two routes becomes a negligible inconvenience. Excellent video BTW - I' sure many of your viewers (myself included) welcome discussions like this of the everyday 'nuts-and-bolts' details of transit running - from both the passenger's and the operator's view.
don't know how many routes could be shortened and NOT impact service coverage OR force a lot of riders to make transfers in an area of no importance to them and bunching on well used lines would be LESS of a issue then forced transfers at some suburban strip mall parking lot doubling as a interchange depot
One thing you didn't mention is route length. Cities with super long bus routes tend to have much more of a bunching problem, as these long routes are more likely to be impacted by bunching.
When i started studying urban planning in the middle of copenhagen, it was my first experience with "big city" transit.
I had never seen bunching before and was just so flabbergasted at 3 busses showing up at once, then being stuck in traffic for 20 minutes for a walk that could take 5 minutes on foot.
My worst nightmare is when a crazy person/people enters the train car I'm in. While I keep hearing there is more protection on the trains in my area, I never see it.
WHAT CRAZY PEROS Holy crap hold my Hand Waht.. WHO.. It's 009 And the quuen frozen
I used to take the second bus to school, only waiting a couple minutes for an empty bus, otherwise was a cramp and packed bus and missing both would be half an hour wait... pain...
On bus systems, bunching can also be worsened by parallel routes. While running several bus routes together on one corridor section can increase frequency on that section, it's hard to coordinate every route to pass through at an equal spacing.
I remember the bus system in Sweden being very good. Always on time. No issues. I'm not sure if it's technically ironic that I find the train system in Japan to be so good (or better), but the bus system in Japan to be so bad/flawed. Maybe it's just the part of Japan that I live in. The trains are great. The busses, uh, just walk... The bus system in Sweden made a very positive and lasting impression on me though. I guess that was almost 30 years ago...
In college, there was a loop service around the campus that ran every few minutes.
There was one stop on the far side of campus with a timer. The driver would set the timer for 10 minutes (or something, forget the value) when they left, and if another bus reached that stop before the timer hit 0, they had to wait.
Prevents bunching, but annoying if you're on that bus sitting at a stop for 10 minutes. The loop ran both clockwise and counter-clockwise though, so not many people were actually on the bus at that timed stop.
I have never experienced bunching in Switzerland, we have transport schedules
Thanks for exploring this issue, Reece. When it comes to buses, I sometimes feel that direct communication between drivers might help -- for example, the driver of bus #2 with its many empty seats could agree to leapfrog the jam-packed bus #1 to clear out the upcoming stops along the line.
I live in the San Francisco Bay area and there was a route in San Francisco the #15 that would often bunch up and the drivers would do what we referred to as leapfrogging the lead vehicle would stop at the stop, and if the trailing vehicles did not have a request for people to get off they would drive on by and now the vehicle that was in the second position now becomes the vehicle in the first position and stops at the next stop to pick up passengers, and if they have anybody getting off they'll get off. In this way, the buses would actually move pretty quickly as a pack, but still annoying when you're standing there for 20 minutes and then four buses show up in a row. To your point, this route has been replaced by a tram.
One of our bus routes starts in a local shopping town. The garage the bus comes out of is also in the town. Despite the fact that when shopping, I usually get on the bus at the 2nd stop on the route. That route still suffers bunching which, I suspect, is caused by the buses being late on their incoming journey.
Occasionally , we get an announcement that a bus is being held at a stop for a minutes to "re-sychronise the service", or "re-balance the service". I suspect this is to reduce bunching. Also, sometimes, the bus terminates early.
My local train line does't really seem suffer bunching, unless something has gone wrong, because the railway company cancel trains (or even close the line) at the first sign of trouble.
🆗, I’m gonna have to say this, because it’s SOOO annoying to ALWAYS hear this wrong. It’s:
FEWER passengers,
FEWER buses,
FEWER stops.
All of these are COUNTABLE.
Bunching used to be endemic on the TTC a decade or so ago. Wait 25 minutes, only for 2 buses to show up within seconds of each other. I remember taking the same bus that arrives with less people regularly. It's still a problem but more frequent service and express buses have alleviated the issue somewhat.
I've seen buses on the same number do a "leapfrog" where the bus behind overtakes the bus in front and picks up passengers at the next stop, and then the bus that's behind which was previously in front overtakes it again and so on.
Sometimes I've seen buses leapfrog others in the bunch.
A while back I read something about drivers being actively told how far ahead the next bus, and instructed to keep back.
There's also having schedule leeway in the turnaround point, though that works better with lower frequnecies and also shorter routes.