It may be that one day, you'll be standing at a bus stop with no shelter in 46c weather with no water or hat waiting for a bus that is 20 minutes late.
If and when that happens, you'll understand why I once hit the external emergency door override for a bus that tried to drop off a passenger but not let me on, and gave the busdriver an earful when he tried to close the door on my arm.
I wish bus stops where I live weren't so hostile to the user, no one wants to sit on metal in 100 degree weather, especially with no shade. Also if the buses came sooner then every 30 mins I would consider them more often but if it takes me 30 mins to walk to a stop where I sweat in the sun with no shade and the bus left early before I arrived I might end up waiting an hour hoping it arrives. So then I have to leave extra early and it's too much effort especially when I have a car.
I used to live in Southern California. Many bus stops have no bench and no weather protection. It can get brutally hot without shade, and since it's a drought area, lots of people get caught without clothing for inclement weather. I think it almost criminal that there's at least no covering for these stops, much less a bench to help wait out such conditions.
> Todays busses don't even have heating in the winter
Reminder that not all busses are the same, and your experience is extremely localised to you - even different bus companies (or bus models used by a single company) in the same city can be completely different, yet alone different parts of the country, yet alone different countries.
Near me, for example, pretty much all busses have heating for the winter, and maybe half (random estimate) have AC for during hot weather while the other half just have windows/vents to open or shut.
In my car I have a comfy seat and can control my environment (noise, temperature etc.) and whom I share the space with. On the bus I'm often standing and crammed in between dozens of other people. Also the really big problem isn't being stuck in traffic on the bus, but being stuck standing in the cold at the bus stop waiting for the bus that is stuck in traffic or cancelled.
Which, as a patron who doesn't want to sit for an hour in the sun, is really not acceptable. The bus is not supposed to be in a race, they are supposed to make predictable stops along a predetermined route.
Most bus stops I have used in the US dont have covered shelters or enough space for passengers to wait outside of the elements. Usually this means sitting under the overhang of a nearby business. If the bus doesn't want to stop for whatever reason and blows by, it sucks.
Maybe a better future would be a public bus app or button at the stop that I can press to say I am waiting, but until that day, they should stop.
If the bus stops every 200 meters, it has a chance of stopping 10 times, which takes a lot of time. If the weather isn't prohibitively horrible, I have to wait for the bus to arrive and if there's traffic, chances are I'll be able to reach my destination on foot faster than by bus.
It's fine by me, but it seems that I'm just not the target audience for busses.
The weather is omnipresent, my northern friend, and when the buses are running on time it's not a problem to only bring a 600mil coke bottle of water with you, but you will go through that if the bus goes AWOL.
It's not practical to bring a camelback everywhere in case the bus decides not to show up, but I don't expect you to know that, since you clearly turn the air-conditioning on at 25.
My city's buses often take longer than walking, and I have to stand on them because the suspension is not sufficient on our roads, it's probably not even safe to sit sometimes. The HVAC and rattling/flapping noises are extremely loud.
I ride the bus here when absolutely necessary, I usuallly walk the 3km to/from the regional train station to avoid it. Often it's not even an option, since all of the routes close down at about 1:30, and at that point come every couple hours.
After two mornings of standing in near-freezing drizzle waiting for a bus that I hope I can get a seat on, I don't agree. The reasons I take the bus are that my commute is actually faster (yay Exclusive Bus Lane!) and a lot cheaper ($13.60/day, which wouldn't even cover the toll for me to drive).
If the headway between buses is greater than 15 minutes, then few people are going to chose it as their transportation option. If one bus fails to show, often enough for me not to bother and walk instead, then you have a 30 minute waiting time at an open bus stop in cold driving rain.
Now I live in Asia and the buses are extremely frequent headway is less than 10 minutes, and I have no need for a car.
Sometimes it's not even the passengers... it's the driver.
Riding the 152 in Chicago one snowy night (about seven years ago), the bus suddenly stopped and the driver made everyone get off into the snow because it was the end of his shift. When we asked when the next bus was, he said there wouldn't be once because he was the last bus of the night.
I ended up walking about a mile to the nearest Blue Line subway station, since the Blue Line runs 24/7.
> "Conclusions ... don't ride the buses is probably an early and obvious one."
Yes, the air quality on London buses is consistently terrible on cold days. There is very little ventilation in those buses other than "open the windows", and when it gets cold people don't do that. Often it seems like you're not only breathing in everyone else's food smells and stinky breath, but road fumes and dust as well.
If and when that happens, you'll understand why I once hit the external emergency door override for a bus that tried to drop off a passenger but not let me on, and gave the busdriver an earful when he tried to close the door on my arm.
Not everyone lives in temperate zones.
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