Although long ago now, When I moved from Denmark to Seattle and tried to use the bus, it was immediately apparent that there’s at least double, maybe triple, the number of stops in Seattle’s Metro as there are in the same distance in Copenhagen. At the time I remember thinking that the average Seattle trip would be SO much faster if the number of stops were dramatically reduced.

So, given that Phoenix, Denver, and Vegas already have spacing similar to European nations do they see the benefits that the author is suggesting?

Waiting for the umpteenth bus stop when I used to commute by them, I kept thinking how much earlier I would get to work if we had bus lines that stopped every other bus stop with strategically placed transfer stations, where you could switch between them or catch a bus going perpendicular to the first route.

I feel like the gist here is that "faster, better, cheaper: pick two" doesn't apply to sub-optimally-spaced bus stops. You really can have all three, at the cost of some political blowback from the people who used to have a shorter walk.

> Nithin Vejendla is a transit planner in Philadelphia.

I feel sorry for Philadelphia transit future, this article is totally delulu. Go to any major European city and look how the public transport works, and you won’t have to reinvent the wheel

London has the new SuperLoop buses, with fewer stops, maybe this article and the SuperLoop are born out of the same idea.

I live in a European city and I just used Google Maps to roughly measure the distance between the bus stops on the two lines I often use:

350, 350, 300, 250

650, 250, 300, 300, 350

It's fine. But we do have proper sidewalks between those.

Any article about public transit in the US needs to discuss the opioid epidemic and mental health crisis. Otherwise, it's like claiming that bicycles work great for the Netherlands, so people should ride them in the Himalayas.

The situation is just so different in many cities in the US compared to Europe in ways that drastically affect public transit.

> By contrast, a bus stop in a French city like Marseille will have shelters and seating by default.

The bus stop I use regularly has seating and shelter. That's great because I currently have severe post-traumatic osteoarthritis in my ankle and it's painful to stand for several minutes while I wait for a bus.

One day, a homeless guy was sitting on the bench when I got there. A few minutes later, he stood up, walked to the bushes, pulled down his pants, squatted, and unleashed a liquified horror from his ass. He pulled his pants up, and sat back down on the bench.

I don't sit on that bench anymore.

Nearly everyone I know who rides the bus has a story of being harassed by a mentally ill person. Most women I know either refuse to take the bus, or only take it in very careful situations where the odds of being accosted are lower.

We can't have nice things as a public without figuring out a way to help the people in crisis who end up making it worse for everyone.

Where I'm at, busy corridors have a bus that has fewer stops (https://www.cdta.org/brt).

express buses that go straight from say point A (home) location e.g from a central point e.g Mall to central point B (downtown) can work wonders - if they're given highway access and bus only lanes, automatic green light access etc

then smaller buses etc that run in a loop to serve the frequent stops

but of course - you need cities that are designed better

with electric buses - this is all achievable and economic