Comments on: Walk or Bus?

By: Steve Bush

Steve Bush — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:08:01 +0000

Hey, neat article. Of course, it helps if one lives in a city like SF which has GPS/internet enabled buses so you CAN know when they will arrive! (Da*m I **love** nextmuni.com on my iPhone, couldn’t live without it! Speaking of great visual charts, their explanation page is a great example of very understandable scientific explanations: http://www.nextmuni.com/corporate/works/index.htm

Way long ago I worked on a simulation to study a new monorail proposal. We actually did model time for door to open, different number of people in line at various times of day, acceleration and deceleration figures, what would happen on rainy days, the works.

An iPhone app or java’d website is suggested here. Can u get to the Muni GPS database? Would be even neater to have it right inside google map for iPhone. But once into an app, we could do any amount of algebra!

Recently, google map said it would only take me a few minutes to get to a place a few hundred meters away. What it didn’t know was that the route was almost straight up! Hardest climb I’ve ever seen! Another variable to add to our model!! I wonder what is the optimal route around a 3D cosine function “hill” if you optimize not distance but “human calories”. Something like Snell’s law maybe, if you were a light beam which way would you go? We’d need to know how much harder (in terms of burned calories or maybe in terms of “perceived effort”) various angles are for average (or overweight) humans. I suspect walking up a 10 degree slope is harder than level ground by more than a factor of 1/cos(10)! Googled for that but see no studies or data… Oh well, not everyone is as nuts as some of us!

OK, gotta go now. I think I see my bus coming!

By: Walk or bus? This chart may have the answer « Free Market Mojo

Walk or bus? This chart may have the answer « Free Market Mojo — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:50:38 +0000

[...] wonder whether you would be better off walking rather than waiting for the next bus? A chart by Visualmotive may be of help. The rule of thumb, according to Visualmotive, is that “if you have N blocks [...]

By: John Russell

John Russell — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:28:50 +0000

Why is it that everyone seems to assume that there are 17 blocks to a mile? It doesn’t make sense. All of Oregon and Washington were platted based off of the same baseline and meridian, and most of the time there are exactly 20 blocks to the mile. This is true in both Portland and Seattle. It makes it very easy for distance calculations, especially since it takes one minute to walk a block. Elsewhere, another common number is 16 blocks to the mile, but never 17.

By: Eugene Gordin

Eugene Gordin — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:40:26 +0000

This is a great little tool – it would be even better if we could have a mobile version of it somehow, so that we can use it on the go (iPhone optimized would be nice!)

By: Chris Mueller

Chris Mueller — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:29:24 +0000

We just updated the chart to use an average speed of 15mph rather than 30mph. This is in line with estimates we’ve seen on several authoritative transit websites as well as anecdotal evidence from a number of commentors. Thanks everyone for your feedback!

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:28:01 +0000

Make this into a shirt! Then I will have it with me while deciding to walk or bus.

By: Chris Mueller

Chris Mueller — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:11:09 +0000

Thanks everyone for your feedback.

@Rich and @wth Agreed, there are clearly dozens of other variables we could be using to provide a clearer picture of which is faster. The algorithm is based purely on assumed travel speeds as indicated.

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:06:02 +0000

Yeah i don’t agree with the very first one.
If you have 1 block to travel and it is 1 minute away…you have to either walk a block(not far at all) OR
Wait a minute for the bus
Wait for the bus to top and open the door
Board the bus
Wait for everyone to board
Wait as the bus takes you a block.
Wait for the bus to stop
Wait for the bus to open door
Wait for people to get off the bus in front of you

By: Nathan

Nathan — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:44:59 +0000

@wth Clearly there are plenty of variables that could influence the exact breaking point at which it becomes quicker to walk vs. take the bus, as you so generously pointed out. But, *in general*, this will definitely help me decide whether it’s worth sitting around or taking a walk.

One need not carry around a printed version of the chart, you can just remember the ‘rule of thumb’ stated above.

By: wth

wth — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:09:31 +0000

wth, ‘great tool!’ and ‘Great always needed this.’????

So, you guys are printing this chart and taking that always with you. At a bus stop, you take the chart and you start looking to determine whether to wait for the bus or to walk?

You guys don’t think there are way to many variables to consider that too heavily impact the chart to be actually useful?
- average blocksize 310 feet? (what happens if an average block is 400 feet?)
- average bus speed 30 mph (what happens if there is a congestion and the bus can travel only 10 mph?)
- what happens if the bus is a few minutes late?

Damn, this must be a theonion page