Bus Clumping

aka Bus Clustering

when later Commuter Bus-es catch up with earlier ones. Aside from being really irritating, the tail-end buses get underused, the earlier buses are standing-room-only, and you create Traffic Jam-s when they are all trying to get to the same stop.

• in NYC this has gotten worse with the spread of DoubleBus-es, because fewer of them can fit anywhere, plus it takes longer to load one up. And in many cases

  • the bus stop comes after and intersection

  • the tail bus has to stop before the intersection to wait for space

  • so anyone in that right lane (planning to turn right into the intersection) gets stuck

http://007inafrica.blogspot.com/2006/11/other-side-of-street-theorem.html

I read about one place (Bulgaria?) figuring out that letting the last bus pass the buses ahead helps with this. I don't know whether that applies at stops or during long-road driving, though. If you passed by skipping a stop, people wouldn't be able to get off which would be a problem.

I think one thing that would work at (NYC) stops is for the lead bus to pull out faster, even if there were still people in line, and some space left on the bus. Those people could get on the bus behind, and things would in general run faster.

research http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TVG-41J69K4-S&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F15%2F2000&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=220b15c3151e416f94b737a919895053 |study Jun26'2007: for the first time, a NYC bus I was on switched from local to Limited service. That happens to me regularly on the SubWay. A pretty good idea, though it annoys people who suddenly have to get off to wait for a Local.